Ravens of Eternity

386 The Promise of Retribution, Pt The galaxy swirled back into existence as the remainder of the Erinyes fleet flashed back into Hegemony space. With the exception of the Discordians, all of their capital ships had been annihilated. Beyond that, nearly a quarter of all the rest of the ships had been destroyed or neutralized.

Everyone else was heavily wounded. Even the unnamed cruiser of the Corvus Republic was scarred from the battle, and they ostensibly had the best armor on the field.

Thousands of pilots and crew were killed.

Despite the heavy losses that the fleet had suffered, those who were able to escape collectively sighed in relief.

All except for Freya.

She sat completely still in her Varulv, with her mouth agape and her mind in a chaotic whirl. The events of the past few moments were something that she simply couldn’t compute. Or, rather, she wouldn’t allow herself to compute, to understand, to absorb.

The reports on her screens and MFDs all showed the truth of what just happened – that Lucifer rammed into the Imperial devastator, and self-destructed in a most spectacular and violent fashion.

Though that one act allowed them to run, it came at a truly severe cost. And she simply couldn’t reconcile it. She didn’t want to.

Every part of Freya refused to believe that Lucifer was dead. Every part, save for Tiamat’s Transcendence. She fought against it with all her might.

.....

Her body trembled as she outright refused to believe it. At the same time, her mind played out the events moment by moment. She absolutely needed to know if Lucifer was able to survive somehow.

Those moments rolled across her mind over and over, again and again as she pieced everything together.

Or tried to, anyway.

She felt Lucifer’s mind flare out brightly as ze had connected to the battleship ze had taken over. She felt hir mind spread out and widen and encompass every millimeter of the battleship itself. But then hir mind had vanished, dwindled, and winked out long before the ship itself even rammed the devastator.

Or perhaps it was less of a dwindling, and more of a falling into a void. A deep, dark, endless void filled with the echoes of countless dead.

Then it dawned on her that it was no void at all – that was the mind of Godeater, and it had clearly consumed...

No, Freya lied to herself, Lucifer couldn’t possibly be gone. That’s impossible...

Her chest tightened even as she fought against the reality of it. Physical pain began to fill her – it truly felt as though someone was squeezing the life out of her. As though someone reached into her body and gripped her heart, hard.

And loss was something she was well and truly familiar with. She spent years as she lamented the death of her grandparents, of losing everything she held dear back on Earth. That world and the life she could have had was completely lost. Even the loss of Sunflower took her an incredibly long time to get over. Still, she got over all of those, some more painfully than others.

But this... this felt like something completely different. Like she had never experienced loss at all in her life prior, and that everything else she had suffered was nothing.

It was as though she had lost some deep part of herself, and there was no recovering or restoring or rescuing it.

Time and space began to unravel around her, even as she felt everything inside her fall away.

The shell that was her body could only watch as her mind and heart fought furiously against each other. They warred over the denial or acceptance over Lucifer’s death, and neither wanted to concede any ground.

Even the part of her that needed to accept it had reservations.

Lucifer was the only person in any galaxy that she felt that much of a kinship with. Ze was the only person she had truly shared her entire being with. The two of them had shared minds and hearts and bodies and loves and hates and laughs and tears to such a fine point...

Not that there weren’t any issues – they fought and argued and quite literally smacked each other around at times. But they always grew out of those battles, big or small. And both understood the value they gave each other.

Learning and growing and building in tandem... It was a kind of togetherness that truly made the galaxy feel right.

And through it all, both of them could be their truest, most authentic selves no matter what. Freya knew that no matter how silly or ridiculous or impulsive she was, Lucifer was there for her. And no matter how rigid or uncompromising or fatalistic ze was, she was always there for hir.

There was always space in between them for each other, and she felt it was something they intrinsically understood from the moment they met.

Freya thought back to that first time she met Lucifer, back in that accursed Federation holding facility. She remembered feeling an infuriating mix of trust and distrust in hir. And wondered, in hindsight, if Lucifer felt the same way about her.

Another pang of pain gripped her chest as she realized she would never get an answer to that question.

That any question that ever would come to her in the future would never materialize.

That an entire future had been erased from right in front of her, and there was nothing she could do to bring it back. All that existed now was the void.

The thought filled her with such sorrow, such frustration, such anger.

She had been denied a future so great and so promising, that she desperately needed to cry, to scream, to rage. And perhaps she did – everything was completely blurred to her. The only thing that she felt acutely was the stabbing, squeezing, blinding pain of her slowly-beating heart.

It wasn’t just the loss of the future that tore away at her – it was remembering all the small moments before, in the past. The moments she never really thought about much at the time, the kinds of moments that slipped in the cracks between memories.

They were little things like grins and glances, quips and jabs. And that look ze got when things got serious.

All gone to the void.

“Hey! Freya! You with us?” said Azrael. “You okay?”

Freya snapped out of her reverie and rose back from out of the depth of her misery. She blinked as she looked around and realized that she was in the Nest, deep in the heart of the unnamed cruiser. The rest of the First Feathers looked at her with concern etched on their faces, though she hardly noticed.

She wondered briefly how much time had passed, but then discarded that thought quickly. She simply no longer cared.

“I know you called for this session, but you’re obviously still not doing so great,” Azrael continued. “We really oughta get you over to medical so the team can look you over. Gotta make sure you’re okay, you know?”

“Exactly,” added Dellarran. “Just come on by – we’ll talk things through, see how you’re doing on every level, and help you get back on your feet.”

“It’s fine,” Freya said brusquely. “I’m working through it on my own.”

“The Republic lost a great deal in that fight,” said Payalos. “We suffered hundreds of casualties, half of them fatally. But we’re working through it all, and you really ought to join us.”

“Yeah, exactly – you’re not alone in this,” said Azrael. “And we hope you’ll talk with us when you’re ready. But in the meantime, you really oughta take things easy, really give yourself time to rest and recover and-”

“No, I can’t do that,” Freya interrupted. “You know I can’t. We’ve gotta keep going. And we’ve gotta take it to the Imperials. We can’t let this loss slide.”

A number of the First Feathers glanced at each other, their faces marred with confusion and sorrow and a bit of surprise.

“We aren’t about that,” said Claire. “You know we aren’t. We just barely escaped complete disaster only what, a few cycles ago? And you think going back into that mess is the answer?”

“We understand that you’re angry,” said Aurora. “Many of us are – I know I am! But we just lost so many. Losing even more isn’t something we’re prepared to take.”

“Even if we wanted to, we couldn’t,” added Shintarra. “We lost so many pilots, so many engineers, and crew, and tacticians, and commandos, everything. We get that you want to fight, and so do we, but-”

“Do you?” Freya interrupted again. “It sounds like I’m the only one who’s angry enough to fight. Does anyone even know what this... loss actually feels like?”

Azrael stood up next to Freya in a huff, her dark face flushed with frustration and anger.

“You’re not the only one who lost someone!” she said. “And I definitely know exactly what losing someone that close feels like. It’s hell! I spent years in that hell, and even then it took me a great deal of effort to get out. And that’s with your help! And Lucifer’s help. And Xylo’s help.

“Besides that, you’re not the only person who loved Lucifer, and Lucifer’s not the only one who died! Your grief might be deep, but it isn’t more important than everyone else’s. Your anger doesn’t get to override everyone else’s.

“And you don’t get to pull all of us even further into a massive vendetta that’ll only lead to more death and suffering and pain and loss!”

Freya knew deep down that Azrael was right, that dragging the Republic into the front lines to kill Imperial forces was the worst thing to do. That her grief was overriding her reason and compassion.

She exhaled as the First Feathers’ words swirled around her. But she paid very little attention to them. She was consumed by a most frightening need.

The void inside was replaced by a flame that wouldn’t allow itself to be snuffed out.

Every fiber of her being demanded blood. Vengeance for Lucifer. The feeling was so overwhelming and encompassing that it overrode everything else about her.

“I won’t let the Empire get away with their war,” she said.

Her voice was low and steady. There was a tone in it that deeply frightened some of the First Feathers.

“I’m done letting them get away with destroying lives, and for what?” she continued. “So they can have more Krohn? Wasn’t that what our intel has dug up? They’re doing all this for their ledgers. Hundreds of us died for this... garbage. Thousands... no, millions of people in the Hegemony have lost so very much.

“Call me selfish for demanding this. And if I feel this way about losing just one person, I can’t imagine how hundreds of millions of others feel as well.

“I’ll find the ones who feel exactly the way I do, and do what needs to be done. So if the Corvus Republic won’t help me destroy the Empire, then... the only thing I can do is resign from it, and find those who will.”

Freya then got up and walked out of the Nest, fury in her step. It left the rest of the First Feathers completely stunned, unable to process exactly what had just happened.

Freya... quit?

As a fearful murmur spread all around, Amarok rose up from her curled position on the floor, then turned towards the rest.

“I’ll watch over her,” she telepathically told them. Then she walked out as well.