Always the First
He knows. He knew, rather - no one had to tell him. His brothers didn’t find him, and something broke inside him, a piece of his heart disappearing into an unknown kind of black. It was clean, crisply breaking one thing from another, a decisive crack that snapped all the way to his bones.
His brothers didn’t find him.
If his brothers didn’t find him, it meant that there was no one left.
The crew of pirates leaves him be, lets him obsess. He slices into long-forgotten databases, finds old records and old articles, dredging up answers along with the uneasy spectres of the past. For a while, the only company he keeps are ghosts.
The pirates do not protest when he insists on somewhere halfway across the galaxy, a moon so insignificant it’s never even had a name. But they take him.
When they get there, he steps off of the ship without them.
The ruins of the Venator stretch in front of him, a memory half buried in a vast expanse of twisted metal. It is scored with scars and burn marks. Its bridge, shattered, reaches palely for the sky. Its bay doors lie half open, broken, a secret that exploded before it would be kept. The wind whispers around it, cutting into his skin until it prickles. His hair stands on end, and he shivers. He did not bring a coat with him, only the thin tunic the pirates gave him. He misses his old clothes.
It snowed here, at some point. The ground is damp, but it’s firm when he walks across the dirt. Patches of melting snow dot the landscape, quietly turning to water and soaking back into the earth. He wonders if it takes comfort in its subtle cycle, moving on until the stars die. If it has seen nothing but the change of the seasons, or if it was here for the day the Venator crashed and the world burned to the ground.
He walks across the earth, and every step hurts.
He sinks to his knees, and reaches out his hands, and his bare fingertips brush across the surface of a life lost.
It is the first, ahead of the lost legion, like the soldier he always was.
The plastoid is cracked. The paint has faded, an echo. But it is still there - the stray brushstroke, the place where he put a little too much on and laughed, smudging his finger in the excess and dabbing it cheerfully onto the other’s face. Blue, flashbacks of long-ago yesterdays and memories and homes, outlining the place where his eyes used to be.
The cog sits on his forehead, just like it always did, a pledge and a promise to the first thing that gave him a purpose.
But all Kix can see is the wheel that stopped turning.
Jesse’s helmet is still intact, smeared with grime-filled scrapes from the day he left it behind. The plastoid is cold, so light it could dissolve in his palms and never know the difference. It is just a shell, just a shell, its memories stolen with its warmth, lying empty on a nameless moon without him.
Something in Kix is broken, beyond repair.
Jesse’s ghost whispers in the wind, wrapping itself around him until he can’t feel anything but the ache.
His hands are warm and he grins, so bright it hurts to look at, and his head tips with mischief. He bothers him while he’s supposed to be working. He produces half-crushed ration bars after battles and groans when someone tells jokes worse than his and says something so sarcastically he can’t help but laugh. His arms are the only place that ever felt safe; he builds them a home from his body. The world is in his heartbeat, a promise never leaving, never gone, by your side. He never said the word until, implied always instead like there was a dream they could find the answers to one day.
He taps his bucket against Kix’s and says something they can both recite by heart and runs off to be brave, and Kix turns to the lines of injured brothers and tries to be strong.
Jesse was the first, always the first, always a soldier. He never got the chance to be anything else.
And Kix, left behind, is the last.
That little noise I just made was my heart getting stepped on.
This didn't, admittedly, turn out the way I hoped it would. Translating emotions to words has always been one of the hardest parts of writing for me - and some things go too deep to describe.
Happy Halloween, y'all, and a very bittersweet ending to this year's Clonetober. I want to thank you all so much. You being here has meant the world to me over the past month - every time someone leaves me a headcanon or a piece of feedback or says "hey, this is really good!" it's made my day. Truly, writing for the best boys over the past month has been a stunning experience.
I don't know what my page is going to look like from here on out - of course, I plan on continuing to write these little pieces! But taking this in a new direction is something I'm honestly nervous about. Let me know what you want to see from me - pop in to leave me a request or a prompt, a general comment, or to just say hi! I appreciate words in all forms. I'll try to put out a survey or something in a few days, and we'll take it from there.
I'll see you all next month.
