by Roxie Ray
“That’s noble of you.”
“I see it that way as well. There are more ways to be noble than simply giving orders. Helping others however we can—that is the true sign of nobility.” Coplan snorted. “Forgive me, Savii. I am boring you with poetic musings. How do your legs feel now?”
I wasn’t sure if I was relieved or disappointed as he pulled his hands away from my skin. He’d been edging his fingers farther and farther up my thigh in a way that was either terrifying…or exciting. After being treated badly every time I was touched for so long, it was hard to tell one from another.
“That helped, yeah. I think so, anyway. Thank you.” I tilted my feet back, then pushed them down. My muscles felt more fluid after the massage, at least. It was progress, even though I was pretty sure it’d be a while before I was back to my full strength. “And you’re not boring me. I promise. It’s been, um…kind of lonely here so far, actually. It’s kind of nice to talk to someone for a little while.”
“It is merely my duty as your healer,” Coplan said solemnly.
Oh. My heart fell a little at that. Of course, Coplan wasn’t actually trying to be my friend. I was his patient. He was my healer.
He’d just been doing his job.
“Well…thank you anyway.”
“It is no trouble.” Coplan nodded as he stood. “If you wish to speak again, or at greater length, I am happy to give you companionship. We do not simply wish for your body to heal during your time here on the Avant Lupinia. There is more to health than just your physical form. Your mind, your heart, your soul—these things, too, we must heal.”
“Have you, um…heard anything more about where Atlanta might be?” A change of subject felt in order. I could handle whatever medical treatments Coplan wanted to put me through, and the conversation had been nice. But healing my heart? My soul? When it came to that, I didn’t even know where to start. “I’m worried about her. If she fought harder than I did, or if she ended up somewhere even worse—”
“Do not think too much about that, Savii,” Coplan instructed me. “I understand that you are worried for your sister. On Lunaria, I have a younger brother myself, Palan. He is still training to become a warrior, and I worry sometimes for him as well. Rest assured that the generals and I are doing everything in our powers to ensure that your sister is found. Until then, you cannot torture yourself with possibilities. Wondering what if will not help her right now. You must focus for now on your own health. If there is anything I have learned in my training as a healer, it is that you cannot help others in the way you might wish if you yourself are not well.”
“I’ll try,” I promised him. It wasn’t exactly the answer I’d been hoping for, though.
How was I supposed to get better if Atlanta was still in danger?
How was my heart supposed to heal if its twin was still out there, being broken over and over again?
That night, I dreamed of Coplan’s hands. Only this time, they weren’t just on my legs. They were all over me, massaging. Caressing. They were gentle, kind, and moving always with care. The warmth beneath his palms radiated through me, soothing my bruises and warming my tired bones down to their marrow. The heat coiled in my stomach, sent tendrils of comfort blooming around my heart like roses during a full moon. It pooled between my hips as his voice whispered in my ear.
“Shhh. I have you,” Dream-Coplan purred. His lips were just as hot as his hands were as they brushed against my earlobe, the nape of my neck. “You are safe here. You are valued. You are whole. Nothing can hurt you here. Nothing at all, for as long as I live.”
Even in the throes of my subconscious, I knew it was a dream. Nothing more. But it felt too good to ignore, too delicious to deny. My hips shifted beneath his fingers, rocking back and forth, bucking upward to claim more of that pleasure with a hunger I hadn’t felt in a long time. Maybe not ever. As his lips trailed down the small mounds of my breasts, I could feel myself getting wet for him. Longing for him.
I wanted more. More, more, more of him. Everything else felt a million lightyears away here. In this place, this sacred darkness, there was only me. Only him.
But as Coplan’s fingers moved between my thighs, their warmth faded in an instant. A chill shot through me, so cold it nearly left me burning all over again. His fingers felt like icicles on my skin, and when I pulled away, he dug his nails in so hard for a moment I was afraid they’d pierce my flesh. When I looked down, I didn’t see Coplan’s sunny, summery orange skin tone anymore.
The nails were back. The fingers, red.
I screamed, but no sound came out. The world was spinning, spinning, spinning around me, but I couldn’t move. My body was frozen in place by the Rutharian’s chilling brutality. I couldn’t get away. I couldn’t stop him.
This time, I couldn’t even say no.
A second set of hands cupped my cheeks, these ones pleasantly warm again. I forced my eyes open, blinking wildly as I tried to thrash away, but my blankets were impossibly tangled around my legs and above me, looming over me—
“Savii. Shh. I have you. You are safe.” This time, when Coplan said the words, they were real. He stroked my cheeks with his thumb, moving something wet away from my eyes that I realized after a moment must have been tears. “I heard you screaming from my office. I feared…” He sighed. “Never mind that. It was only a dream, Savii. Nothing more.”
“A nightmare. I know.” I clenched my eyes shut again, squeezing out the last few tears. Coplan wiped those away as well. “I knew it in the dream too, I think. At first, at least. But then, everything changed all of a sudden, and it felt so real…”
“You dreamed of the Rutharians?”
I nodded. I didn’t add that I’d been dreaming about him before things had spiraled out of control. My cheeks burned hot beneath his soothing fingers in embarrassment. I’d been so eager to give myself over to him in that dream, to feel him, to feel good again, but now…
It wasn’t exactly polite, I knew, having sexy dreams about my own doctor. Or healer. Or whatever. Luckily, he didn’t need to know about that part.
“You have the terrors, Savii. It is a common thing among victims of the Rutharians.”
“We call it PTSD on Earth. Post-traumatic…something.” I forced my body to relax as I reached down to disentangle my legs from the blankets. Coplan helped me do it, until I could lay the covers over my legs smoothly once again. “I don’t like being a victim, though. I don’t want to be one.”
“You are not a victim. It happens among warriors too,” Coplan told me. “When it does… Ah, Savii?”
“Yeah?”
“Would you like…to be held?”
I blinked. Now, my cheeks were more flushed than ever. Suddenly I felt like such a baby. Sure, I’d been through a lot, but I wasn’t with the Rutharians anymore. I was safe now, which Coplan seemed to assure me of every time he saw me. It was pathetic, that I was still having nightmares of something that I was supposed to have left behind when Coplan carried me out of my cell.
“That’s okay. I’m not a child.” I drew away from him, but Coplan took me by the shoulders and held me in place. It was only then that I realized how badly I was shaking. Like a tiny, scared little bunny caught in a rainstorm.
Pathetic was right.
“You are not a child,” Coplan agreed. “I do not wish to treat you like one. But even warriors, when the terrors take them…I would hold one of my own warriors in the same way. This is a thing that cannot be cured by medicine, even that which is as advanced as my people’s. I do not seek to soothe you like a crying cub. I merely wish… No matter what you have been through, Savii, you must be reminded that you are safe now. That you are not alone.”
“I guess…a hug couldn’t hurt.”
I felt weak for admitting it, but to be fair, I felt weak all over. Even when Coplan opened his arms to me and I placed myself in them, my body felt fragile and frail, and whatever thing was inside me that made me me—my soul—did too. But as he envelope
d me in a firm hug, the kind that left my cheek pressed against the hard muscles of his chest beneath his lab coat, the shaking in my hands and shoulders subsided. My racing heart slowed to a steady beat—rhythmic, regular and strong.
“You are doing so well, Savii.” Coplan smoothed my hair down over the back of my head as he held me. “You are a fighter, whether you think yourself to be one or not. Nothing can take that from you. Not nightmares. Not the terrors. Nothing can hurt you anymore.”
“You were right,” I said with a small laugh. “This…is kind of helping, actually.”
“Good. Do you think you can return to sleep now?”
I grimaced as he pulled away. “I want to, but…I don’t think so, actually. Any progress I made today, it feels like that nightmare zapped it all out of me. I’m tired but…I don’t know. Still on high alert.”
“That is normal. Do not fear it.” Coplan tapped a finger to the protruding bone over my heart. “This is your body doing its job. It is telling you that you may be in danger, even though, obviously, you are not right now. Normally, it is a good thing. Right now, however…the terrors have your system somewhat confused.”
“Confused…sounds pretty accurate, yeah.” I rubbed my eyes. The warmth of Coplan’s embrace was still lingering comfortably on my skin. “Is there anything I can do about it? I don’t really want to sit here quietly panicking in the dark all night until my body gets itself together, honestly.”
“I could give you sedatives, but—” Coplan must have seen the worry in my eyes, because he held up a hand. Let me finish. “They would not teach your body to regulate itself. It is a bandage over a wound, not a cure.”
“What’s left, then?”
“Exercise, perhaps.” Coplan glanced to the door. “The ship should be quiet right now. All the lights will be dimmed. We may come upon a few stragglers wandering about the corridors, but for the most part, all should be asleep in their bunks. If you feel able to—”
“I’d like to take a walk, if it’d be okay.” There was so much pent-up energy in my exhausted limbs, I felt like if I didn’t move soon, the balance between tiredness and adrenaline would tear my body apart.
Coplan smiled and offered me his hand. “Come then. I know exactly where to take you.”
As we moved out of the medical bay and through the halls of the ship, I had to lean on Coplan more than I wanted to. My knees trembled with every step like they wanted to buckle under me, even though I knew I couldn’t have weighed very much at all. I felt bad about how slow we had to go, too. Coplan could have gotten where he wanted to go in half the time. With those long, muscular legs of his, I was pretty sure he never had problems getting anywhere.
But he didn’t seem to mind how slow and weak I was. He put his arm behind my back to steady me, hooking his fingers around my waist in case I fell. I put my arm around his hips in return. My fingers rubbed up and down his belt, which felt like it was made of soft white leather. He moved at my achingly tedious pace until we reached an elevator. It took us to another hallway, this one long and empty. It was illuminated along the floor by gentle, low blue lights. At first, I thought the walls had been painted completely black. But then I saw the little pinpricks of light in the blackness and realized that the walls weren’t walls at all. They were windows, the seamless kind.
I gasped when it all came together for me. I wasn’t looking at paint at all.
I was looking at space. Wide, open and endless, speckled with starlight all around.
“Where are we?” I asked in a whisper.
“On the ship? Or in the galaxies?” Coplan chuckled a little at my question. “This place is the viewing deck. When we first began rescuing humans, Leonix would sometimes take them here. Often, they would faint at the sight.”
“I’m not going to faint,” I promised him. Although, the way my knees were knocking together, they didn’t seem so sure about that.
“As for the broader picture…we are en route to the Balexi sector. We set sail from Lunaria while you were sleeping.”
“We were on Lunaria?” I frowned. I’d made peace with the fact that there was inhuman life in the stars back when I was trapped on the Rutharian base, but it was kind of disappointing to know that I’d been on Coplan’s home world without getting to see any of it. My first chance to see what I was hoping was a peaceful alien planet, and I’d blown it by trying to claw Coplan’s eyes out.
“We were,” Coplan confirmed. He looked a little unsettled too. Maybe he hadn’t wanted to leave home? “But…there are political workings on Lunaria that may not have served you well. The presence of humans among us has left many on Lunaria uncertain of how our society should proceed. On the one hand, the existence of your species poses the potential to increase our birthrates and solve our population problems. On the other…” Coplan shook his head. “I do not want you to concern yourself with Lunarian politics, Savii.”
“Will we ever go back?” It felt like a stupid thing to ask, but after all the horrible things I’d been through since I’d been taken from Earth, it seemed unfair that I wouldn’t get to experience at least a few of the marvels that an alien planet had to offer. If I’d had a camera, it would have blown up on my social media, anyway. “Can I see it someday?”
Coplan took a long time to answer. Long enough that the silence between us felt heavy, like a sack of potatoes on my shoulders.
“Perhaps,” he finally said. “But for now, your focus should be on getting well. Then, we will find your sister. Then…would you not like to return home?”
Home. I’d thought about that every day when I was in the Rutharians’ cell. For a while, it had been the only thing that could keep me going. Get through this, and eventually they’ll take you back. But as time had stretched on, I’d started to lose hope.
For a while there, I’d worried that I’d never see Earth ever again.
“I would,” I admitted. “Once I’m better. And once we have Atlanta here to go home with me.”
“Good.” It was hard to tell from Coplan’s voice whether he was relieved that he’d be able to get rid of me someday, or if he didn’t care at all. Even for a man—or, an alien man, I guessed—emoting wasn’t really his thing. “What do you think of all this? Open space, the stars?”
I stared out through the windows of the viewing deck for a long while, drinking it all in. I’d never been good at putting words together. The captions on all my posts had been carefully constructed by a team of copywriters. Poetry wasn’t exactly my strong suit. And even if it had been…
How could I have possibly summed up the vastness of what I was seeing before me? So many stars. So many planets. So many species that probably lived on them. Other worlds. Other people. Other lives.
“It’s beautiful,” I finally said. “Maybe the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.”
“It is,” Coplan agreed after a moment.
It was only when I sensed him turning his head back toward the windows that I realized he hadn’t been looking at the stars when he said it.
He’d been looking at me.
6
Coplan
It was nearly morning when Savii was finally tired enough to return to her room and try for sleep again. I could tell in every step she took that each movement was a great labor for her. It made me proud to see that even when she stumbled, or had to stop completely, she never leaned on me more than she had to. She never asked to be carried, even though I could have done so easily and would have done it happily as well.
She pressed on, no matter the struggle.
She was an incredible thing, this tiny, dark-haired human I had taken into my care.
When I left her, the lights of the ship were beginning to rise again. A new day—and I had barely slept enough to face it. I yearned to return to my own room and slip back into my bed there. Or…I did not wish to allow myself to think it, but Savii had looked so soft and sweet curled up beneath her blankets, there was a part of me that wondered if it would not be more
comfortable to squeeze in next to her. Coil my body around hers. Give her my warmth while she slept. She took up so little space on her mattress, I was certain that I would fit, and as I heard her breaths grow slow and deep, I would know that she was sleeping soundly. If I listened to her whimpers, I could soothe her nightmares away before they fully took hold.
It was an inappropriate thought, likely one born more out of my own sleeplessness than anything untoward.
I was tired, and she was sleeping peacefully. Any other man, healer or not, would have felt the same.
My first duty of the day was my rounds, which I split with Head Healer Adskow. Even if I had been called upon to do them on my own, they still would have been too few to take up more than half an hour. We had unloaded most of our wounded back on Lunaria, retaining only those whose recoveries were approaching so that they might rejoin the other warriors. I released two such men back into the ranks. They seemed happy to return to their comrades and bunks, and I was happy to see them go. No healer ever wished for their charges to linger in their care for longer than was necessary.
Savii would learn that too soon, when she had put on a little weight and regained her strength. Though, I was forced to admit to myself, I would be a little more sorrowful to see her go.
The call to the communications room came shortly after my rounds were finished. I had been considering a nap, but alas, Kloran and Haelian needed me. I only hoped it was not to give me more warnings against falling for my patient. The first round, I now realized, I had been a little wounded by. I was a healer, not a female-chasing scoundrel. I would not welcome a repeat of their commands.
But when I entered the communications room, any fears I had been holding on that subject were quickly dashed—and replaced with new concerns. Kloran and Haelian sat in front of a holo-monitor, looking vexed. Between them, flickering and shimmering in three-dimensional projection, was a face that usually brought trouble along with it. Her dark hair flowed around her pale orange cheekbones, caught in an unseen wind. Her eyes were black, emotionless.
