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Three months post-retirement, General-Veldheer Adam Hart was busy propping up the bar at the officers’ mess in Paris, trying to decide what exactly he ought to be doing. He’d expected to know by now, but he hadn’t much cause to try since the Perpetuum launched last spring, taking with it the most shining silver piece of him. Adam wasn’t a stranger to romance; he’d had thirty years of space adventures and adrenaline to sustain him, but this was not the disappointed heartbreak of thwarted amour. He missed Elidh like one missed a limb, or the stars once you’d had them: nameless, permanent, haunting loss.
He wasn’t expecting it, per say, when Dermott slid into the seat next to him, but it was not a surprise either. Not after the morning he’d had. He felt a little sorry about it, actually - not the doing of it, of course. Just that a nice kid like Captain Dermott had to go cleaning up the mess after.
“So you punched a cadet,” Dermott said without preamble.
“It sounds bad, when you phrase it like that.”
“How do you want me to phrase it? General Hart, with all due respect-”
“And how much is that, exactly?” Adam interrupted. He was nursing his second glass of ceq, which hadn’t been enough to really get him drunk for decades - but it was a convenient enough excuse.
“Excuse me?” Dermott cocked an eyebrow. A boyish Lieutenant scurried by, throwing a sincere, sloppy salute in passing. Dermott nodded at him without breaking stride and it occurred to Adam that Dermott was not a nice kid. He was a kind, conscientious man in his thirties, and it was not his job to clean up after Adam. It hadn’t been anyone’s job for months now, and maybe if he hadn’t forced Elidh into the role before, things would have turned out quite differently.
“Sorry,” Adam said with a sigh. “I know I messed up.”
Dermott signaled the vaguely human-shaped droid behind the bar. Instead of the rich blue liquid he’d been expecting, the droid set a mug of black coffee by Adam’s elbow. A familiar mug, he realized. It was the same mug he had used on the bridge, years before, right down to the tiny chip in the base under the handle.
“Where the hell did you get this?” Adam demanded, picking it up with such force that it sloshed a little over the sides.
“Your companion left it with requisitions for your personal use on premises. Is that not satisfactory?” The droid responded with dull politeness.
“You mean Elidh? What did he say?”
Adam waited with fizzy impatience as the droid accessed its collective database, shared with whichever serviceable shell completed the transaction. Its eyes flickered, first to processing yellow and then to green for task completion.
“Some things are never obsolete.”
Adam swiped half heartedly at the spill with his napkin, feeling suitably chastened.
“General-Derian Akinah Elidh,” Dermott said, and it was a sentence all on its own. “He commands a lot of respect around here, believe it or not. Most of us know that it would have been impossible to end that bloody war without Fortahni aid. Three decades of service with the Allied Interstellar Protectorate is more than enough proof of loyalty.”
“Very nice wording. Diplomatic, even. I can see why you’re ranked so highly.” Adam set his mug down and turned his gaze toward the younger man. “Maybe teach it to the cadets while you’re at it.”
“You could have put him for a transfer. You could have gotten him removed from the program, blacklisted. Scrubbing every toilet from here to Starbase, if you wanted to. You didn’t have to cold cock him for running his mouth about a superior officer.”
“That’s not why I did it,” Adam said with tightly controlled fury. “It’s got nothing to do with this place or his rank or what he did for the AIP. It’s because he was talking about Elidh. My Elidh. And you already know that.”
“Yes,” Dermott answered softly. “I think everyone planetside does. Maybe try telling him too… while you’re at it.”
~~
Elidh answered when Adam called, the viewscreen image of a tall, slim male figure draped in silvery blue, a perfect compliment to his unusual skin. His hair, white and long, had been braided intricately in the style of a Fortahni of some rank, and the room he occupied was lovely - sun dappled wood and steel.
“Hi,” Adam said, voice cracking with the late hour and too much ceq for this kind of conversation.
“Is something the matter?” Elidh asked immediately. There was a tension to him, in the way he leaned ever so slightly forward on his dais. Elidh usually had the most perfect, graceful posture. He still cared, then… however much he ever had. However much Adam had ever let him.
“Yes,” Adam confessed. “Damn it, I miss you.”
Elidh hesitated. “I… are you being amusingly hyperbolic?”
“You know I’m not.” Adam allowed himself a sentimental gesture; his fingers brushed against the screen of his communicator. The gesture was not lost on Elidh, who became as still as a portrait, frozen in time. Perhaps this would be the last time Adam would see him like that. He’d ignored those feelings unbecoming a battle-hardened general, shoved down and suppressed. They burst forth like speed from an engine, outrunning terror and danger, out into the black welcome of space and time. Adam could not recapture them if he wanted do. He did not want to.
“I should have got on that ship. I should have followed you back home. I didn’t want to give it up - you, our friendship… any of it.”
“What you are implying goes beyond mere friendship,” Elidh protested. “That cannot be what you meant. No person would willingly choose to be with an old general like myself.”
“No one?” Adam asked knowingly. The bluff paid off, as they usually did for the foolhardy, charmed Adam Hart. He’d never needed it more. Elidh did not argue the point.
“You know there’s one. Tell me not to call again, or that it’s impossible. Tell me to give up, that Solari and Fortahni just isn’t done. Tell me… you don’t want me, and that’s the last you’ll hear on it. Whatever you want, Elidh. I want that too.”
For a long moment, Elidh was quiet. It used to drive Adam mad, that careful patience. He hadn’t understood for years that for Fortahni, Elidh was brash, uncontrollable. They steadied each other, sword and shield. Without him, Adam cut himself to pieces.
“Fortia does not permit settlers,” Elidh said finally, regretfully. Then he disconnected the call.
For a moment, Adam sat in the darkness, sober and uncertain. Was that it, then? It was truly over?
… no.
When the AIP first promoted Adam from Lieutenant to Captain, he’d had his pick of the litter for first officer. He’d politely looked over recommendations, the way a newly promoted captain should. He’d watched training sims, examined test scores - he had looked the perfect model of obedience. Elidh had made himself scarce that month, but he’d just won a war. Adam had figured that he just needed a break. The day of selection, Adam had walked up to the podium and announced his choice was First Officer Akinah Elidh with the kind of swaggering obviousness that just dared an objection. There hadn’t been one; the only person who had been surprised was the Fortahni himself.
“The AIP does not permit non Solari to rank,” he’d said, over and over again, till finally Adam grabbed him by the collar and gave him a little shake.
“I chose you,” Adam had said. “And I’ll do it again and again till it sticks.”
Not one time that whole call had Elidh said no.
Fortia didn’t permit settlers? Well they’d just have to see about that, wouldn’t they? He’d be willing to bet that peacebroker General-Veldheer Adam Hart was worth a little more than your average petitioner. And so what if they said no? Were the two of them really going to sit around being peaceful for another forty years? No, never. There were peoples and worlds and things to see out there. There always would be. Elidh must miss it too - his silver grey eyes like starlight in the darkness whenever they were planetside, always turned upward.
There was a little red cruiser with a price tag in his range, and a freighter heading out that sector way in a day or two. Adam’s world had only ever been the ships on which he flew, and those who were with him on them. Of all that, it was Elidh alone who remained.
“See you soon,” Adam said to the little chipped mug on his bedside table. This time it was a promise.