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Despite the exhaustion that came with everything that had happened in recent quintants, Krolia was still awake.
She sat with her back against the wall of the cave they'd made into their makeshift shelter. Keith was sleeping, facing away from her, lying next to his new little wolf-creature. The pup was curled in a tight ball against his back, clinging to him like it was afraid he would disappear the instant it looked away.
As she watched, the wolf's ears twitched in its dreams. The animal was a mystery to her-- having arrived from the sky in a burning ball of flame from some unknown origin. The teal accents in its fur, while distinctive, didn't fit neatly into the catalog of known planets and lifeforms she'd become familiar with during her life.
Keith called it a wolf-- something similar to the coyotes Krolia had sometimes seen and often heard prowling the Earth desert in small, yapping packs. But, to her, the little animal seemed more like what she knew of dogs than what she knew of coyotes. Unlike their wild cousins, dogs latched onto humans for companionship in a complicated, codependent mess of a relationship that spanned thousands of generations and thousands of decaphoebs. If left by themselves, these dogs became wild, fearful, and unstable. Near the end of her time on Earth, Krolia had surprised a dirty, floppy-eared mutt investigating the toolshed behind their house. Cornered, it had snarled and barked at her with the desperation of a creature fighting for its life, even as she’d tried to soothe it with the soft tones and passive postures humans employed with dogs. Ultimately, Krolia had shooed it away, and it had tun back into the desert, alone.
Like a dog, the wolf had securely attached itself to Keith since the moment he'd saved it, fully trusting he'd continue to save it in the future. It was much more skiddish with Krolia, like it had noticed she'd stood idly back in its time of need and was still deciding if she could be forgiven for her thoughtless transgression.
Krolia sighed and folded her arms. For now, the wolf would remain a standoffish mystery. She leaned her head back against the wall, closed her eyes, and hoped she could slow her thoughts enough to rest.
She had just begun to approach the edge sleep when the flare came.
Krolia knew it was coming before she saw it. She felt it vibrate the air as it tumbled over the horizon, and it electrified her skin as it washed through the walls. She wrenched her eyes open as the flare wrapped her in its yellow light-- always consuming, always inescapable. She jolted, bracing against the wall, as if she could prepare herself for whatever it deemed to show her this time. Sometimes, the brief, unbidden pieces of the life she'd subjected Keith to were innocuous.
But sometimes they weren't.
The need to know everything Keith hadn't yet told her battled with the horrified want to hide herself from each crystallization of “what if” and “maybe” into “yes.”
As if the yellow light gave her that choice.
This time, she saw a human child.
She couldn't tell how old the child was--but he was small, so probably very young. His face was made up of many of the features she remembered from the man she'd met on Earth, and so many from the man sleeping beside her. At first, Krolia didn't understand the stone structures around him, placed on the ground, but the child was looking at one in particular with intense attention.
She didn't her enjoy her ignorance for long. An instant later, the knowledge and emotion that framed the vision flooded her mind.
Dead. Alone...Anger.
Anger. So much anger.
It grew to smother everything else, covering the vision in a burning, red rage-- at the world, for taking what didn't belong to it. Anger at the people that said everything would be okay--because nothing could ever be okay again. Anger at everything that had changed and at all the things that continued on as if everything were the same. Anger at everything he couldn't control.
...And a confused anger towards a woman he had never met, who now had a new, more significant absence in his life than she ever had before--
--Then in the next tick, it was gone. A memory of a memory.
Before she could stop herself, Krolia gasped. She quickly clamped her mouth shut and froze against the wall. She reached for the iron self control she'd built for years to force her face back into a neutral mask. She stole a glance at Keith. He was, mercifully, still asleep, curled on his side. But the wolf pup was awake. The wolf that Keith had so strongly felt needed saving--while she had stood passively aside, ready to leave it to its fate. It lifted its head and eyed her apprehensively, ears flicking.
Krolia suddenly needed to move-- to get away from Keith. She couldn't wake him-- face him. As quietly as possible, she used the wall to pull herself up-- watching Keith as the wolf watched her. She pushed herself from the wall and left the cave.
She ran.
She ran as far as she could--because eighteen years of wondering were coming to a head, and she wouldn't be able to hold it all in for very long. When she stopped, in a small clearing vacant of the strange vegetation halfway between plant and animal, it was so the pain swelling inside her could spill out.
She'd made the wrong decision.
A lifetime’s worth of conjecture had concluded. She had an answer, now.
She should have stayed.
Krolia dropped to the ground, letting her knees slam against the blue stone and dirt.
The wolf appeared to one side, a careful distance away, shaking the air with a snap. It took a timid step towards her, sniffing, looking at her with a wary consideration that almost looked concerned.
Krolia ignored it. The man she'd found on Earth, then fallen in love with, was dead. He had been for years. She pressed her face into her hands. If she had stayed, could she have saved him? Krolia didn't know how he'd died-- but surely she could have helped him, healed him….
Protected him?
But she hadn't. She'd left. Because she thought she was keeping him safe. That felt so naive, now.
And Keith…
Krolia sobbed in a choppy, ragged breath.
...Keith had been alone. He’d been abandoned. She'd left the small, angry boy ungrounded and unsupported in an awful universe that had again and again proved to only offer suffering and cruelty.
...In a universe where the man she'd fallen in love with could be dead.
And all she'd left him was a damned knife. As if that could keep him safe from the intergalactic war slowly creeping up to his planet's doorstep. As if that would be enough to guide him when he'd been pulled into the heart of it, when he should have been guided by his mother.
Krolia laughed-- a sharp, awful clap that warped into another hysteric sob. The pup beside her startled back several steps.
No matter what she did, she never could have kept Keith out of this war. No-- he’d been destined to be drawn to ancient forces of a dead civilization-- to be brought with four other scared Earth children to find what she'd come to the planet to protect. He’d been destined to awaken the Red Lion that had inspired and thwarted ambitious Galra since long before he’d been born. And he would be a successor of the man that had started it all, and be handed the responsibility to end it. He was always meant to be not only dragged into this war, but to be one of its leaders.
Leaving him had done nothing.
But if she'd stayed, he could have at least had knowledge-- preparation for what fate and archaic Lions had planned for him. With her guidance, he would have grown up with an understanding of the way the universe really was, and, maybe of his place within it. When the Blue Lion began drawing him to it, she'd have been there to support him, to prepare him for what came next. And maybe they could have even found the others-- guided and prepared them, too.
And she would have stayed close to him through everything--he wouldn't have been left to figure it out himself, to face it alone. She would have been there to save his father...or at least she and Keith could have been together when the bedrock of their lives had crumbled.
And, maybe, he wouldn’t have become the hurt and distrusting and angry young man she'd seen in the visions from the yellow lights.
...If she'd stayed.
She'd been so, so wrong.
Krolia watched the ground blur as tears gathered across her vision. She realized, with a slow onset of indifferent surprise, that she couldn't remember the last time she’d cried. She let herself curl around her legs, pressing her chest against her knees.
She fell into a far depth of herself that she rarely allowed herself to visit-- and she peered into its dark, gaping expanse, tilting further and further towards its bottom.
And she was ready to stay there. To lie at the bottom of the blackness that she’d brought on herself.
Because, maybe, that was what she deserved.
Xxxxxxxxx
When Krolia came back up, she didn't know if she had been in the dark expanse for dobashes, vargas, or decapheobs…. And maybe she would have stayed in that darkness for millennia to come if something else hadn't invaded it.
There was a sound, high-pitched and continuous. Krolia wanted to stay in her black hole of grief, where she could be alone with empty memories, but the sound cracked the hole apart with a bright, insistent cacophony. As much as she tried, Krolia couldn't ignore it. Finally, it forced her to once again become aware of the reality around her.
She lifted her head from her knees--
--and found herself staring point-blank into the eyes of the wolf pup, nearly smacking its snout with her chin. It had lifted its head so its nose was an inch from her cheek.
And the damned thing was whining.
Krolia snarled. She lunged forward, baring her teeth. Before their faces could collide, the wolf popped out of existence with a satisfying crack. It reappeared to the side, a safe distance away on the edge of the clearing and well out of her reach, coiled and ready for an attack. It flashed its teeth back at her, in a threat, but its ears were pressed down flat against its head, and its tail was curled between its legs. It crouched against the ground, making itself small.
Krolia glared at it, daring it to try to come closer. But, as the ticks passed, she let her face relax. Gradually, the wolf unwound from its defensive stance, straightening to a stand.
They stared at each other.
Finally, it shook itself--so much like a dog-- releasing tension in a ripple from its nose to its tail like a clinging layer of water. It settled into a sit in the not-quite-grass. Krolia lowered her knees from where she'd folded them against her chest and turned to face it fully.
“What do you want?” She spoke quietly, not particularly expecting her voice to carry-- but the wolf's ears swiveled forward. “Why did you follow me?”
It cocked its head.
Krolia sighed. She dropped her hands next to her and dug her fingers into the blue soil beneath them. When she spoke again, her voice lowered into a resigned whisper.
“Why should you even care?”
The wolf blinked in blank incomprehension. For a few moments it sat still, flicking its tail sideways. Carefully, it stood up again. It paused, watching her skeptically, like it were teetering on making some decision.Then, instead of darting away-- like it should, to put as much distance between it and her as possible-- it took a step forward, towards her.
Krolia froze.
The wolf ducked its head and swept its nose from side to side, sniffing the air from her direction. Absently, it brought the rest of its paws forward to keep step with the first.
Slowly, Krolia lifted her hand and extended it out.
The pup leaned forward, sniffing intensely. Then, bravely-- or stupidly, or forgivingly-- it took another step. Then, another. It steadily closed the distance between them. Krolia stayed still. It stopped when its nose brushed against her knuckles. It glanced up at her, meeting her eyes.
The wolf shoved its nose under her palm. It tilted its face back so her hand landed on the top of its head. It rubbed back and forth, forcing her to passively knead the space between its ears. Krolia curled her nails down to scratch softly in its fur. The wolf wilted, leaning into her hand with a high-pitched sigh. It finally gave up its careful watch and closed its eyes in contented satisfaction.
Despite herself, Krolia smiled.
She stayed there for a long time--accepting affection that she hadn't earned, from an animal that should have hated her. She wound her fingers through its fur and let it lean closer and closer against her.
And she thought about all the things she would have to do to ever possibly deserve this.
Eventually, when the pup was beginning to fall asleep, Krolia gently extracted it from her lap. She stood and left the clearing in the direction she'd come. The wolf followed.
They went back to the cave, and they returned to their posts beside her son.