SWWAE Chapter 16: It Could Never Be The Same

Earlier today, Hugh had crossed his arms as a sign of anger towards her, but now he stood there crossing his arms but protectively. He also was not letting himself stand anywhere closer than the other side of the room from her. She didn’t point out the fact that he was standing inside of her. Nor that even from across the room she could still hear the whispered conversation between him and Gramps because they were standing next to an intercom.

“She’s not a bad person,” Gramps said. “Sure, she’s scary as all hells, but she’s just a person, Hugh.”

Hugh wasn’t taking his eyes off her. “Those thi—” he cut himself off, fearing her reaction to what he had been about to say even if he didn’t think she could hear him. “Her kind have killed entire systems and destroyed planets not to interact with us, Vestan. Not to mention she killed the previous captain.”

“She didn’t kill Heather,” Gramps said with very strong resolve. “It’s not wrong to say she resulted from what got the previous captain killed, but it was not her fault. She didn’t ask to be plugged in, and Heather should have known better than to try to power ancients’ tech.”

“She’s still ancients, and we don’t know enough to know if she’ll even consider us people.”

“She’s not a damn Yechun. Not to mention she’s just a kid, Hugh. One whose brain development was based on a human’s, not just an ancients’. To her, she has spent her whole life around humans, being one of them.”

“Yeah, only humans that weren’t even real.”

“Like you didn’t get so sucked into Nemine that we had to have an intervention to get you out of that virtual game and to spend time with real people.”

“Bringing that up is not fair, Vestan. That was a genuine addiction.”

Gramps sighed. “You’re right, I’m sorry. You know what I’m trying to say, though.”

“Do I?”

“You know your arguments don’t hold up. You’re just scared.”

“Of course I’m draking scared. Have you seen her?”

Gramps crossed his arms. “Mable feared you when you first took her in. She thought you were going to eat her.”

“That’s different,” Hugh growled out gently.

“How so? To her, you looked all big and scary with your teeth and claws, and she was afraid to get near you.” Hugh continued to growl, but it got softer. “Look at what you’re doing right now. Cowering in a corner, whispering and watching her as if she’s going to pounce any second.”

“I don’t like those amber eyes.”

“By the gods, Hugh, you have the same color eyes. Fine, if you don’t want to help, then just leave, and we’ll find someone else to do the spellwork.”

Hugh stared at him for a moment before looking around the ship. “There’s really not a single piece of spellwork on here?”

Gramps crossed his arms. “Not a drop, but what do you care? You don’t want to be the one to do every single piece of Kenana-era magic on a true Stargazer.”

Narrowing his eyes, Hugh did his best not to growl. “You’re not playing fair.”

“You’re not giving my granddaughter a fair chance.” Now, Hugh did growl. “Hugh, you have the chance not only to restore arguably the most crucial parts of a Stargazer, but to be one of the first people to interact with a once-extinct species[1]. She’s never even seen someone do spellwork before.”

Pursing his lips, Hugh looked back over to her, and she waved. “How do we know she won’t suddenly turn on us once we fix up the ship?”

“How do we know anyone won’t? Give her a chance, Hugh. She wouldn’t even get far if we just brought her back to original specs.”

“Why do you trust her so much anyway? You’ve known her for less than two rotations.”

Gramps thought for a moment. “I saw her at her lowest, and no one deserves to be alone in this universe.”

“So you just picked her up and decided she’s your granddaughter now, even though she is a terrifying piece of ancients’ tech?”

“Yes.”

Hugh sighed. “You’ve got a few bolts loose, you know that, right?”

“And I wouldn’t have it any other way. Now, are you going to help or not?”

There were tense few moments as Hugh stared at Vestan, then the wolf turned to look at her. Finally, his eyes left her and looked around the room. “Drak, I’ll do it, but you’re paying for the materials I need.” Gramps’s face lit up. “And don’t rush me when I work. I’m going to do this right and not take any shortcuts. I’m going to need the schematics of the ship and a list of everything that’s missing.”

“Already done,” she said over the intercom, making Hugh jump.

“You were listening that whole time?!”

“You are technically inside me, you know?”

“That’s not a comforting thought.”

“And I’m not normally comfortable with men being inside me, so we’re both out of our comfort zone.”

Gramps’s face turned red. “Alright, let’s get to work, you two.”

Four hours later, Hugh was deep in the throes of making lists of material that were needed while Gramps and she were working on her belly. The damage there was quite worse than she had initially thought it would be. Not only had Stargazer taken damage from the violent tearing off of another ship, but there was debris still lodged inside of her all along the belly from the other ship having exploded.

“But why do I have to do this all by hand, Gramps?” she asked, pulling out a piece of debris. “I’m a regent, I can just commandeer this away and fix myself like that. I need to learn how to better actively heal and alter myself too.”

“We’re doing it this way because you need to learn how to do this the old-fashioned way. You’re still marking all this down, right?”

Using her regent nature, she had figured out how to alter a copy of the schematics of Stargazer to show how it had been when she first commandeered it. Doing so had been slower than she would have liked, but that was mainly because she was doing all of that in the back of her mind since Gramps suggested it. It wasn’t what she had really been focusing on. There was a part of her that knew with time she would get far better at actively dividing her focus to perform multiple functions at one, but that was still a ways off. At least when it didn’t come to her naturally.

“Yes, I’m marking all of this down. I still don’t understand why I need to learn the old-fashioned way.”

Gramps yanked out of a piece of metal. “Because you still need to know how to do all this without your fancy regent abilities, Kiddo. Maybe one day you’ll need to do this on a ship that you haven’t commandeered. Maybe one day something will happen and you’ll need to know how to fix yourself without your abilities. I’m just making sure you actively know how to do this and not just let a passive power do it for you.”

“If this were a story, I would say that’s foreshadowing.” She sighed. “You know, doing it this way hurts a little every time we have to dig something out.”

Gramps froze and turned to her with wide eyes. “It hurts you?”

“I might not have nerve endings, but damage still hurts. The scrapes when pulling something out and prying plates open aren’t a lot of damage, and I don’t always feel anything with how truly minor it is. Other times it feels like pulling splinters out of your skin.”

“Did tearing out your battery hurt?” He looked concerned.

Now it was her time to freeze. He hadn’t known damage actually hurt her… “Yeah, it was pretty bad.” She hoped her internal tears couldn’t be heard in her voice. “Which is odd, because compared to me,” she gestured up to herself, “the damage was minor. I don’t really know how it all works.”

“Kid…”

“Anyway,” she said, trying to move on. “Are we going to fix the internal wiring the old-fashioned way, because I feel like that’s going to take a lot of time since it wasn’t just damaged but completely altered?”

Gramps didn’t respond right away. “I want to look at that before deciding. With how extensive you make it sound, we might have to do it your way in all the smaller places just so we aren’t entirely gutting you to get at everything. The major lines will be easy to access though, and that I feel like would be good to do my way.”

“Okay. Wait, will we need to do all the lines to the spellwork to make sure that all works when Hugh is ready?”

“Giff, probably.” Gramps sighed. “Alright, let’s pause on the exterior for now and go look at the wiring.”

Nodding her agreement, she went over to the ramp. As she stepped out from directly under herself, she glimpsed the sky through the hangar windows. It was sunset. “Can… can I go look at the sunset first? I haven’t seen a sunset in real life yet.”

“Uh, sure, kiddo. If you want, there’s roof access at the top of those stairs,” he said, pointing over to the multi-story set of stairs that led up to the catwalks at the top of the hangar. “Do you want me to come along?”

“No, I’m fine by myself.” There was a piece of her that didn’t want to be alone, but she hadn’t really been alone since meeting Gramps. Yes, she had the nights to herself to sleep, but it had been all day every day with him. It would be fine just to have a moment to herself. “Pull open the panels and start having a look at the wiring. I won’t be too long.”

With that, she rushed up the stairs before Gramps could make a comment. Normally, climbing up so many flights of stairs would have tired her out a little, but not with this body. At the top, she found the hatch and pushed open to reveal the red, pink, and orange sky above her. “Even on another world, sunsets are still beautiful.”

Getting on top of the hangar, she found the raised ledge and sat down on it, letting her legs hang over the edge. When she had thought she was human, heights like this would have normally scared her, and if she was being honest, they still did. The difference was she knew a fall wouldn’t kill her, though it would probably hurt quite a lot. From the few experiences with pain, she knew the feeling would only be temporary. That knowledge didn’t help the call of the void[2] that spoke in the back of her mind.

Her amber eyes didn’t look at the ground; instead, they looked up to the horizon. Was it improper to think that even the beauty of your own goddess didn’t compare to the majesty of a sunset? One would think while looking at something so beautiful that one would feel happiness, but she was just sad. She would never get to share a sunset with the people she had loved ever again. They weren’t even people…

“I’m sorry…” she said to the ones she had loved. “I know I could probably find a way to start up the simulation again and then just live out a life in blissful avoidance of reality. I know I could see you all again… With how complicated your codes are, maybe you could pass the Kren’s Test except for the soul. Maybe you couldn’t…”

How deeply she wished she could feel tears running down her face because it would have made her feel like flesh and blood again. Well, not again, since she had never been that. “Is this goodbye?” Knowing it was didn’t help the desire to say it wasn’t. “Is it strange to mourn over something that wasn’t even real? Even if it wasn’t real, it made me who I am.” Taking a deep breath, she looked directly at the sun, no longer needing to worry about it burning her eyes. “Fuck, how do I do this right? How do I properly say goodbye? I’ve never been good with goodbyes…”

Her speaker made a sound of a sob. “I love you all with everything I am, and I’m sorry I didn’t always say that while I had the chance. I hope you would all forgive me for not going back because it could never be the same…” The sobbing got worse. “I’m sorry. I’ll love you forever.”

[1] I think I’m going to change race to species because I like the sound of it more.

[2] This is the urge to jump from high places even though one does not wish to die.

[Having a pretty rough time the past few weeks. Got some really bad news and just trying to cope at the moment. I haven't actually written at all for over a month, but I do have a bit of a backlog of these chapters so there will still be regular posts for a while. I might still take a short break after next weeks chapter so I can line up breaks with uploads on SH. I hope you guys are enjoying this story so far.

I do have a question for you guys. LotM is about to finish on Scribblehub so that means this story is going to be uploading there soon and the question I have is what tags do you think I should use for this story? This is a Sci-fi story so it will obviously be tagged with that, but it's also a secret high-fantasy story so should I tag it with Fantasy? If not right away could I tag it as fantasy after the reveal is uploaded?]