Warnings: a lot of Ezra waxing poetic and melancholy
A/N: This is designed as an "after" Prospect one-shot, distinct from my others.
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"So….what's on the other side for you?"
He had half been expecting her not to ask, she had happily filled the silence with her excited babble of pods and books and maybe finding her friend Jessica ("She might not remember me, it was like...six years ago. But she was my best friend. I always hoped she...you know. Got what she wanted.")
He had called her a little bird. It seemed appropriate at the time. He had seen her, looking like she was prepared to fly off, small, a prey animal surrounded by predators, and flittering about as though it made her seem larger but it just made her seem quaint.
It grew more and more appropriate as the trip back continued.
Feeling safe she nested into her seat and then chattered away. He hadn’t minded. Number Two had never said a word. Ezra was starved for this variety of mundane annoyance.
And so the fact that she paused, took a breath, and then seemingly remembered he was there at all jarred him a little. He offered her a crooked smile.
"I hope to reunite with my poor neglected marital partner. It has been a subject of rather morbid ruminating on my part that the extended and unforeseen absence I have suffered may well have caused her to...move on. While, as a man of reason, I would not be so completely vain as to insist she chain herself to a corpse I would, in fact, prefer to be dead before she did it."
Cee blinked at him twice and choked on the last bite of Bits Bar, "Are you…..are you married?"
"Does this shock you?"
"You didn't...mention it….not once."
"An irrelevant piece of trivia on the Green." He shrugged and stared at his stump, "People are full of all sorts of surprises."
He looked from the stump to Cee.
Somehow it made it...worse. She had swallowed the initial rush of guilt over Ezra's arm by convincing herself that it was self-defense and he, diplomatically, more or less agreed with her. Now that she knew …
Why did she feel guiltier now?
"Do you have kids?"
"If I do, I do not know about them." He smiled sadly at her, "And they'd be old enough now to be rightfully distrustful of a man coming into their home and calling himself their daddy."
That twisted Cee's insides up…
The whole time he had sat there rotting on that moon…
The case of aurelac he'd left behind….
Kevva.
No wonder he was a little nuts.
“Where are you from?”
“Sora-4.” He looked out the little window.
Cee struggled to remember what that planet was like and eventually it clicked for her, “It’s...a desert planet? Mostly mines and...uh, moisture farms? The atmosphere is really humid but the ground is dry.”
“Indeed, there’s a moisture barrier, the dust on the planet has a way of kicking up and locking out the very thing that, if it were permitted to take root, would solve all of its problems. Rather a metaphor for life, oftentimes we find the thing that can fix us is kept at length by us in some misguided attempt to prove some quality in ourselves exists. Independence or grit or forbearance or some concept that, I will tell you from experience, when it is all you have seems dimmer than you previously imagined when it eluded you.”
He reached out a finger to trace the stars, “When you...kept it away.”
Cee furrowed her brow. She liked to think she followed what Ezra said but also thought he was a trap, a knot, designed to confuse you long enough that you paused while he got into position to attack.
Then again, he had, in his own strange way, done right by her.
The Green was not a trifle, the things her father had thrown her in with were not tame, and she realized how easy it would have been to die or be captured.
His feet remembered the road home. Remembered the connecting flights. The port. The way from port to pod.
Before he had left her he had passed Cee the coordinates, “If you do not find your friend, little bird, and if I have anything to offer as a means of support I will be here.”
“What do you mean if?”
He shrugged, “I have no way of knowing what the past has wrought and what the future holds ahead of me-- but neither do you. It is the great mystery of the universe, little bird, and no matter how advanced we get we can never untangled it and make it tell us its secrets.”
He’s worried his home won’t be there.
But Cee kept the paper.
The man might literally have nothing and he had offered whatever he had to help her. Really, he had done this more than once on the Green, the more she thought about everything that had happened the more she realized that he had chosen to protect her rather than hurt her. He had helped. But bad situations, for a long enough time, in a dangerous enough manner, could make even good men’s intentions seem twisted and dark. She had thought him...meaner.
Maybe he was.
But maybe he’d become that to survive.
She had no real way of knowing who he had been before, or who he would continue to be.
He was right about that: a great mystery where we plod along with minimal information and no way of knowing how it will really alter the path we are on.
Cee hugged him before she took the flight back to the last place she remembered happiness and people her own age and things that made her feel...like herself. Feel like a fifteen year old who was alone but optimistic and who wanted to read her favorite book again and see if new parts had been written and simply out of her reach.
He hugged her back with one arm and then squeezed her shoulder, “You know where you’re going? How to get there? How to use the points chip?”
She nodded, “Yeah.”
He released her, “Well, birdie-- may your flights be smooth and your fights minimal, in the very best way do I mean this: I hope we do not meet again because I very much wish you find what you are looking for.”
She smiled at him, “You too.”
And then she left.
And he was back to having nothing.
And he started walking home, not knowing if there was nothing there too.
And by the time he got there…
He almost didn’t knock.
Kevva.
He was not the man who had left this house, and he had no idea if you were the same woman he’d left behind.
With his hand frozen an inch from the door it opened and you nearly bowled him over, coming outside with one of the clear barreled-baskets under your arm that was used in moisture farming for collections. That was the house collection basket, you used it for cooking. You liked to keep your cooking water separate from the household rinsing water.
You looked like you'd seen a ghost.
"Hello Dust Bunny."
Your heart stopped.
It just stopped. You dropped the basket you were holding.
Without fully assessing what he looked like you launched both arms around his neck, hugging him tightly, you'd always been the quiet one and now you were just sobbing into his neck with a soft little, "Are you back? Really back? Is it...is it you?"
He reached up and held you as tightly as he could, his hand on your nape, his lips kissing the top of your head as he choked back the fear that you'd surely notice, any second now, what was wrong with him.
"I am returned to you." He nuzzled against your temple. Would you let him kiss you?
He didn't need to wonder, you kissed him in a blind fury. It broke only when you sobbed, "Kevva, man, I … I don't want to say what I thought."
He could guess.
"Not a single--"
"I'm so sorry, Dusty, but you have to understand that for whatever cold comfort it may offer you that none of that was fully under my control, I...I was stranded. Marooned, as might more accurately describe the nature of the stranding, I was left for dead on the Green."
You blinked, sniffling, but your eyes wide with concern, "Why?"
"Greed." He shrugged, "I had gotten myself on a crew who had bamboozled me into thinking they were at least as skilled as myself and after a few cycles it was a flimsy fiction indeed and it rather disintegrated. They weren't hardly able to procure more than one gem to my three. And they expected an equal share. Well… my ego was such that I could not abide by such blatant disregard for my skill and rather lost my professionalism. They tried to compel me to share my case and I...struck one of them."
The way he said struck hung on you. You'd seen him strike people before. You'd moved all the way here away from the town after one such...disagreement.
You shook your head, "But you're back now."
He looked around you, peering into the pod, "I...I know I have been gone a long time...your greeting did give me hope but I…."
You nearly slapped yourself, "Oh Kevva's tits-- sorry, please-- come in, let me get out of your way, you must be exhausted."
He didn't come in right away and looked at the threshold, "I am afraid you might not find me quite the way you left me."
You held the door open and urged him, "Never mind-- come in before the dust comes."
He looked at you like you were made of ice, some rare and desirable commodity out here. With a deep breath he came in and released it once inside.
You'd had to replace the one chair you'd always liked and for some reason he noticed that first.
There was a framed picture on the table...a baby.
He felt choked.
You followed his eyes, "That's Niran...Ethel had a baby."
Oh Kevva. He must have looked relieved. You gestured to his suit, "Well go on...it's your home! You're home! Make yourself comfortable...I'll put on caf and toast if you're hungry?"
The suit was large and bulky and hid the most obvious change.
He tensed, wondering how to approach it. He'd be half as useful on a moisture farm as you'd need and that was to say nothing as to whether or not you'd want a cripple in your bed.
Kevva but that bed had kept him warm on cold nights, and the memory of it kept him sane through the Green.
He had done all sorts of worship to you. He had held your hips against his and pushed your back down to keep you flat against the mattress and he had grabbed both your hands and twined your fingers with his while he kissed you and lurched his hips against yours until you were lightheaded. He'd held you in two arms as the sun set here the last cycle before he had left and told you he'd make good and come back.
That was all...gone now. Actions that could never be duplicated again.
At the time he thought of course I'll get it all back again but...he hadn't Kevva's eyes to see how wrong he was about so many things. He could only look behind him now and see the signs he had missed, see the waste he had laid.
You deserved more.
But he was here...and he needed to know how long he could sit in his own home this time. Last time he had walked out of his own accord...this time you might just chase him out.
And good for you.
He'd walked out when you asked him not to. Left you to fend for this...gotten waylaid and not come back. He'd have no hard feelings at all if you ran him out of here. He'd give you one free swing at his jaw if you tried to take one. One free kick to whatever soft parts of him you'd care to aim for.
"Honey? Your suit?"
He did not move at first, you wondered if he hadn’t heard you. Maybe he was just overwhelmed with being home--he’d been gone so long….so very long.
"Ez?"
He looked at you with big and mournful eyes.
“Are you certain you want me to--”
“Kevva’s tits just get into your own home Ez, I will drag you in by the ear.” You felt ruffled, a little choked, “Unless...you….don’t want to...be here. That’s...I suppose that’s…”
“Not remotely what I was insinuating.” He sighed.
His left hand reached up and hit some buttons and clasps.
He let the suit drop.
You stared at the sleeve, empty and taunting you.
Your mouth gaped.
Kevva what an insensitive ass I am. You were mortified...he’d been trying to….
"I understand if you want me to go."
"Is that what you think?"
He laughed, a dark and ugly thing that ripped out of his pretty throat, "Dusty, I haven't the slightest notion because I have not yet procured the ability to read minds but I can tell your look of disgust when I see it and it stands to reason that you don't want half of your man back. I understand the whole situation has likely been a lonely and detestable lot for you, and this is entirely my fault, and this was precisely the whole mess you had hoped to avoid in advising me against the work and now you can rub it in my face how very wrong I was...if you can stand to look at it."
His tone was so low, so...so cutting. He was angry, deeply angry, the kind that bites friendly fingers, but...you weren't entirely sure it was aimed at you.
You reached out to touch him but he flinched away.
Maybe it was aimed at you.
"Ez….I would never….rub your face in it."
Maybe it wasn't a great choice of words but you were fighting off the urge to just launch yourself at him and instead he heard that you were holding something else back.
"Go ahead, Dusty. Get a punch in. I owe you more than one free I told you so."
Your brow furrowed, "I…."
Fuck it.
You loved him.
Loved him to set the sky on fire but you had spent the better part of two years mourning him. No contact. None. No word. He was just listed as Missing from his crew. MIA: condition unknown. You had thought…
"You… I thought you were….dead."
He nodded and looked at his feet.
Once those gates opened you had a hard time closing them, "I didn't want it to be true, I didn't want to believe it, but I just had a hard time reconciling what I knew...you just...you just vanished. There were times I...Fuck, I thought sometimes you ran off on me on purpose. Changed your name and ran off with some--"
He looked pained but scoffed, "Why would I run off on you in such a manner?"
That pissed you right off.
"Why did you even take the Green a second time?!" You squared off at him, your hands on your hips, "I never understood it, Ez, we were fine! We were completely fine!"
"Since when was fine enough?" His eyes cut up to yours.
"I never said I wanted more from you!"
"I wanted more from me, Dusty. I did. I couldn't wait to get out of this backwater. Become a big man. Please do not mistake me...these are my failings. Not yours."
You just looked at him and he gestured with the nub, "I've paid for my vanity. For my...greed. Paid in blood and bone. I… I won't go thinking that I could be a bigger man than staying here with you and facing myself. That is, truly, the biggest thing I could do."
He sighed, "I'm sorry...all this vitriol has nothing to do with you I...I thought about you. Every day. The second they took off and left me behind I...I cursed myself for a fool and wondered if you would ever get to hear me say that I made a mistake and you were right and you were… you were enough."
Your eyes were wet but the tears weren't falling.
Sure, about an hour ago you'd had a whole plan for the day but...plans change.
"You're staying?"
His anger dissipated and only a huge measure of uncertainty remained, "I was hopeful to."
You nodded at that answer.
"Are you….coming to bed?"
"It's the morning."
"Does that….matter?"
He smirked, hopefully but cautiously, "I suppose not...You'll have me?"
You smiled and opened the door to the bedroom, "One way to find out…."
He dropped his kit, his flightsuit, and stepped out of them, kicking them towards a wall, measuring out the familiar paces to his bedroom. You shut the door behind him, and did not have to worry about him leaving again. His favorite side of the bed, much higher than your half after nearly three years without occupancy, still allowed him to reach his arm out and pull you against him. In a time before the Green he had never slept crowded against you because he was a hot body on a hot planet and grew uncomfortable easily. Now...now he touched you like you were the ripcord for a parachute, like you were the filter against the toxic air…
He touched you with what he had left, grateful beyond measure to have made this last trip home.
@veiliisms, I hope Renji wants a semi-bone crushing hug out of nowhere, because he's definitely getting one! A running jump, colliding into him with most of her weight, giggling as she does so! ( Thankfully, she's not bleeding right now, so other than the probable terror of someone knocking into him, he's safe. )
he hardly had a moment’s notice to prepare for the purple onslought that was about to knock him flat on his ass. the first clue was the patpatpat of someone sprinting towards him. he spins on a heel, sees that charming grin, and can only get out a throaty yelp before he’s taken down.
KAY-OH!
dazed and confused for only a moment, he looks up at willow and smiles a great big smile that she can so easily bring out of him. “willow. good to see you too, but, uh - next time, gimme some kind of warning, huh?” he laughs, and stands, helping her to her feet too. he pauses, left hand flexing for a moment, before placing it in his pocket. thankfully, work attire meant the prosthetic was covered.
“what - what are you doing here? it’s been… ages.”
Giggling, as they topple -- giggling, as he pulls her back to her feet -- giggling, as he smiles and says her name. Skies, what a rare blessing that is. Happiness with her name on his lips. Skies.
“The hug was your warning.” Warning for what? For, uh, another hug. Because her arms are draping around his shoulders, her chin propping onto him, green eyes shimmering contentedly, excitedly.
“I was in the neighborhood,” she says, which isn’t true and shouldn’t be trusted for many reasons. First of all, she’s not quite sure what a neighborhood is. The groups of mismatched and strangely huddled places people lived in on Amyra weren’t ever really neighborhoods. She’d just heard people say that phrase a lot, around here, and she liked the weird way it beat against her lips when she repeated it. And secondly, of course, she wasn’t in the neighborhood. She’d been far, far, far away from Earth. No point in Gating if she’d been nearby, right?
“I missed you! That’s why I’m here! It’s -- it, uh... ha... it hasn’t been... that long, has it?”
