this was fun and weird and i don't have any notes because i'm not sure how to explain why i wrote it like this, so good luck guys?
breaking heroes
Clara and I, we were invincible.
I knew I could keep her safe, anyone, really. I was that good.
I never doubted it. I was precise, quick to draw, easy to hold.
I was that good.
oOo
Know what’s bad? Not being oiled, that’s bad.
In fact, it is pretty ******** horrible. Besides, I’ve still got a headache from the bullet barrage yesterday. If I were with Clara, it wouldn’t have been a barrage. It would have been quick and clean, and guess what?
Clara would’ve ******** oiled me.
oOo
The reds and greens from the access panels keep flashing, catching on to the sharp angles of his features, and he grins. Light shines through the grill of the catwalk. Clara keeps me steady, grip hard and cold and I stare at him.
I have no choice. I am right in his face, nearly kissing his skin, and the ******** keeps grinning. Clara doesn’t like these types of guys, except...she does.
“What do you think you are doing?” she asks quietly, sternly, as unwavering as she can without her voice catching on the edges of the words.
I don’t like being left in the dark. I don’t like it when I can feel her fingers twitch, unnoticed by anyone other than me. We are one, and I know when Clara is nervous, scared, and she’s never been both at once but she is now.
And she certainly never raises me in Cain’s directions.
oOo
I am the murderer of thousands, and the saviour of one.
She called it that.
I am the saviour of a fool, a confident fool, so confident in herself that she believed she was the Carina Nebula, much less known but larger and brighter than most; she had stars running through her veins and was one with the sun, racing supernovas and shooting down her own.
I am a murderer.
I am the destroyer, a slave to her hands, devoured by the warmth of her flimsy skin taking me apart—the barrel, the hammer, the rear triggers, front triggers, the springs and screws and plates; removing the burning powder, any old oil, scrubbing me with an old toothbrush, having a quick look to where I’m wearing and being sure to oil me up.
I’m not as new as those Plasma Guns, Grenade Launchers or even an Assault Rifle mowing down anything in its way, but I was good—and I am old.
oOo
I’ve seen many people die, watched them drown within their own blood or have body parts ripped out of their sockets and bullets going straight through their hearts.
But, right then and there, listening to those heavy boots clatter against the metal flooring—thousands of them—I knew that we just might not survive today.
Clara and I, we just might not be invincible today.
oOo
Clara had me out, pointed straight ahead. “The entry ramp to the first Escape Pods is down,” she says over her shoulder to Cain and Priscilla. “The Shields aren’t going to hold forever and we need to get out.”
No one’s on our left, neither is there anyone on our right. She rounds a corner, hands—almost, nearly, kind of—steady and I am just as ready as she is.
“The-the-the-the—”
“Need you to breathe, C,” Cain says firmly.
“Lieutenant,” Priscilla adds.
Clara lowers me, a mistake she wouldn’t ever do near anyone other than Cain; an action she should never do near anyone in this kind of situation. The emergency power generator has run for the past three hours and it’s not going to do so much longer because we should’ve docked.
We should have had the ship checked before we took on another mission, before Clara decided to oil me up and kiss my sides for luck today.
“We aren’t going to—”
“Priscilla, find a way to the Galley and get—”
“The Captain is dead, Cain. He...died. No one in the ******** kitchen is going to change this. The Chef isn’t going to save our asses now because he’s probably ******** dead too, and you’re an idiot. Do you know who’s the highest ranking officer still alive on this ship? Do you realise that that’s you, Sir?” Clara shouts.
She slams her fist against the wall, and I feel the impact in her bones rattle down my stock. Then she’s lifting me up again, facing forward, shrugging Cain’s hand off of her shoulder. “Go ahead Cilla, do as he says because the Commander here thinks that’s what’s best.”
“Yeah, go ahead,” Cain whispers. “Look, C, I am not trying to outrank—”
“How about we just—”
The sirens go off again, alerts warring for everyone’s attention. Clara has ignored the cries echoing on the other end of the comlink. I know she has. She’s been ignoring the orders being shouted and the people trying to evacuate those who are too hurt to stand their ground. But the sirens, the sirens always manage to make her shake just a little, to make her fingers slacken.
“What’s wrong, Bradley?” Cain questions.
“We’re taking too many hits. There’s some heavy resistance,” Bradley’s voice crackles loudly through both of their comlinks.
“Keep them at bay.”
“Sir...we can’t. We’ve been boarded, there’s nothing we can—”
“How’s Maddie?” Clara interrupts.
“She’s out of med-gel; her com’s down. Last I heard she was shouting about how you better be unconscious or dead.”
Clara stops, unwillingly so. Her hands are trembling too much. She’s backed up against a wall, pressing me to her chest to try and calm down. “Engineering Station by the cargo lift?” she questions quietly.
“That was her last position,” Bradley says . “We’re running out of oxygen, too, Lieutenant.”
Clara huffs out a laugh bordering on manic. She’s patting me, like an old friend, keeping me pressed against her chest. “Hey,” she says. She takes a deep breath, listening to the silence that slithers down through the com, strangely loud in the clamor of melting metal and vibrating explosions.
“I’m getting you out of here, I promise,” she says, knowing that there is only one more escape pod because the rest of them have been damaged beyond repair and even if they could repair them there is absolutely no time for it. She looks at Cain, shutting her comlink off. “This is on you. You made the Captain go this far. This is on you, Cain.”
She puts me away before she takes off running.
oOo
Clara is taking me apart, cleaning me. Everything that belongs to me, that is me, that I am made of and that I will always only be, is being placed on the table in front of her. “There are planets being destroyed,” she says. She wipes down my butt stock, and the wedge plates and screws nearly roll off of the edge of the table.
“C, you always get this totally wrong.”
“There are people dying.” Clara wipes down my barrel with a cloth.
“If we even manage to get one of the Seven Crystals, we can—”
“This is not on me. I’ll ask Captain Grey, but this is not on me.”
Clara puts all my parts down. She stares at Cain. Her fingers linger above my barrel, caressing, gentle, soft and slow. She doesn’t look at me, but I know she feels safe when I am around. She feels courageous.
“This isn’t on me,” she repeats and leaves the room.
Cain stays behind. He stares at me with a scowl. “What a piece of crap,” he says before he switches the lights off and slams the door shut behind himself.
I hope Captain Grey does not listen to Clara.
I hope he ignores her.
And ******** you too, Cain.
oOo
Donny is nothing like Clara.
Donny can’t shoot worth s**t. He never even hits anyone, so I get headaches for no damn reason. Besides the fact that Donny’s hands are meaty and sweaty and it’s disgusting. This here is disgusting, and I hate it.
Me still being here is disgusting, and I hate that even more.
I don’t belong here. I am no longer good. I am old. I have been old for a very long time, way before Clara was even born. I’ve grown weary.
And—
I am a murderer.
oOo
Clara pours over flight plans. She’s a Navigator before anything else, so she’s obsessing over flight plans. They are spread out around her floor, and I am right in the middle of them. I am there because if something goes wrong, I’ll be ready and she’ll be ready and both of us would take the world down.
We are ready to save the planets that are dying left and right.
Clara plots trajectories and calculates the numbers until they are swimming before her sight and she has to close her eyes. She thinks about the possible courses, which ones are easier than others.
“This will be my last, Hunter,” she says to me. I don’t like the name, but Clara does. “I am done attacking, I think.” She reaches out her index finger, letting it linger by my barrel. “We’re getting a Crystal and Maddie’s going to take me out for dinner and you know what, Hunter? You’ll get some rest.”
She rubs her forehead and bends to draw up new plans.
oOo
“Stay here, I'm coming back for you,” Clara tells Maddie as the first explosion hits the Cockpit and the entire ship starts shifting.
oOo
We are in the cargo lift. I am at Clara’s side. She’s been gritting her teeth so she won’t panic, or throw up, but usually it’s her first sign of a freak out. The ground has been shaking and it took two tries before the lift actually worked.
“Bradley says we have ten minutes,” Cain says.
“Earth fell silent exactly seventy years ago,” Clara says.
Her fingers tighten around me. Everything is an adventure, that’s what she usually says. We are all but an adventure. Half of the time, the adventures are bad and people die and there is a lot of blood, but that never stopped Clara from glaring, still smiling from ear to ear when someone claps her on the back and tells her she’s done a good job.
It doesn’t stop her from telling her little brother Donny all about them, spicing them up with things that never actually happened and less blood spilled.
Clara lifts me up, facing the doors, ready to shoot, but Cain steps in front of her and jabs the emergency stop. The com chimes with an automatic response Larry built in long ago, ages ago, the voice irritated and unpleasant, saying, “Lift sixteen has stopped. Do you require assistance?” Today, somehow, the voice even manages to sound rusty, old and far away; a sign that the generators are running lower.
Clara lowers me.
I face the ground again.
“Cain?”
He doesn’t answer her. He steps closer. He wraps his hand around Clara’s, around me. “No worries. There are no cameras on the cargo lift.” Cain caresses Clara’s finger, which is still on the trigger. “Besides, it’s all pretty much shut—”
“Cain, how would you know there aren’t any cameras here?” Clara questions calmly. “No one knows that. None of us know that. Captain Grey—”
Clara stops.
She pushes Cain aside, holds me up once more. By the time she’s done so the lift’s doors whisk open and the Cargo Bay comes into view and Maddie’s standing there. There’s blood dripping down her face. She’s gasping, staring down my barrel like I am an enemy.
“What went wrong,” Maddie says. It isn’t a question. Clara does not move. She stays in the lift, staring, still pointing me at her best friend. “C-Bear, it went wrong.”
Her eyes flicker over to Cain and then to me.
“Think,” Maddie breathes before she starts falling to her knees, eyes focused on Cain before they shut completely.
oOo
The reds and greens from the access panels are still flashing. Maddie’s blood is still on Clara’s hands and it’s sticking to me. She is still pointing me at Cain. This isn’t the way that either of us intended for things to go.
“This is a trap, right?” Clara questions. “That’s why you wanted me to talk Captain Grey into such a stupid mission. You wanted him gone, or you are working for someone who wants him gone and now Maddie is dead.”
“Did I?” Cain grins.
There are planets with rings slightly tilted and atmospheres ready for life, right out there in the universe, and they are dying and Cain is grinning while the ship is falling apart and more than half the crew is dead. He bites his lower lip, leans his head forward and stares down my barrel.
“You always did cling to old pistols. What are you, a pirate, Lieutenant?”
oOo
Donny decides to put me back into Clara’s casket and—
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