something’s causing feet to fly, rising like a dark knight in silence traffic’s slow with broken boats heading for the sea and I’m an island

Zoe Alleyne was frozen as the blast doors reopened, and the girl stood before her, the deadly blades in her hands dripping Reaver blood onto the pile of bodies at her feet. Zoe’s world didn’t register the sound of the Alliance blowing its way in, didn’t note the ratcheting of the weapons as they were cocked and pointed, didn’t hear the ragged order that made the soldiers stand down. Like a shade watching those who couldn’t see her, she remained as humanity suddenly flowed around her, Alliance medics running in to treat the injured, others there to deal with the remains of the girl’s deadly corps de ballet. Unmoving, unmovable until their merc literally muscled her out of that hall, Zoe remained, shut down, unwilling to acknowledge what her sense told her. Acknowledgement would mean knowing it was all true, and that was the one thing she couldn’t do. Not now. Maybe never.

I watched you disappear into the clouds swept away into another town

Zoe Alleyne awoke gasping from the dream, the same one she had had every night since that day. One minute, he sat there, that goofy grin of pride and disbelief on his face, unable to comprehend that his flying had just saved them all. His eyes glittered with joy and adrenaline and desire to grab hold of her in amazement. And then he was gone. Not physically. No, the form was there, the blond hair, the fair skin that had shone white next to her own. The hands that were callused in the pattern of the yoke, that had abraded her back when he would brush his palm down it as they went to sleep. He was there, but HE was gone. She curled in onto herself like a wounded animal, her breath coming in pants, and willed herself to some other memory, any other memory.

the world carries on without you but nothing remains the same I’ll be lost without you until the last of days

Zoe Alleyne moved through the oddly quiet ship. Even with seven of them left, the silence could be deafening. She knew it was probably in deference to her needs, but inside, it made her scream. He was never silent, unless it was absolutely necessary. He was laughter, and chatter, and joy. In her mind, it was a cacophony of him, the sound he would make when he entered her body, the voices he gave to his dinosaurs, the shout of him playing ball in the cargo bay. It broke her being into little pieces that the others couldn’t hear it, couldn’t hear him.

the sun is in the east, rising for the beasts and the beauties if only I could tear it down, plant it in the ground to warm your face

Zoe Alleyne stood on the barren, craggy plateau on Haven, looking down at the hologram of her soul. The captain had tried to be helpful, coming back every month or so, so she could visit. But he wasn’t here. The slowly moldering flesh and bone of him might be in this soil, but he never had been. He was somewhere out in the black, maybe even somewhere in that old pieced together wreck that refused to be grounded. If he wasn’t, she knew, the old ship would never have limped back out into space. So she made these visits for the sake of the others, because that’s what they thought she needs. The truth was, she never felt farther from him then she did when she wasn’t on the ship.

I built myself a castle on the beach watching as it slid into the sea

Zoe Alleyne knew there was a world of guilt around her, whenever she walked into the room. It was cloying, like too much cheap aftershave, or funeral flowers left a little too long. The girl was splashed with it, the feel of it wafting after her. The captain was soaked in it, radiating it so strongly, it made her physically ill sometimes. Those were the nights she took to the co-pilot’s seat on the bridge, the faded floral shirt wrapped around her body. Because Zoe knew that the guilt belonged to no one but her. He stayed with the crew because she did, because she couldn’t leave the captain to himself to live or die on the Rim. He certainly didn’t stay for the money, his skill could have commanded a much better salary from some core world corporate outfit. He didn’t stay for love of the old ship, though love her he did, like a mistress. No, he stayed because he loved her like a wife, and she had let him. She had learned in the war that giving yourself something to lose was just flaunting fate to come and take it, but she had let him. And she had lost him.

the world carries on without you but nothing remains the same I’ll be lost without you until the last of days until the last of days

Zoe Alleyne wandered dark corridors, trying to feel everything he might have left behind him. Trying to know what her path was now. She waited every day for a sign, a vision, a need to drive her. She went to bed every night stretched thin as his old flowered shirt, held together in places by will and by knowledge. Knowledge that somehow, this wasn’t the end.

through wars and harvest moons I will wait for you. the world carries on without you but nothing remains the same I’ll be lost without you until the last of days until the last of days

Zoe Alleyne waited three years and one month. She waited through tangles with bad buyers, through the pleasure-pain of the doc and the mechanic’s first babe, through the captain and the companion’s meeting of the mind. She waited until the last of days, the one when the bullet passed through her old vest and into her heart. She waited until the breath left her, joining the wind. The wind on which the fall leaves soared.