“Thanks, Xenith, I really appreciate that. You did well too, though I think you were more comfortable with the older kids,” she smiled with her shark-like grin.
“Well, yeah. You looked a bit more at home with the younger kids. They were cute, but I’m still tired from them.”
Qianii chuckled. “They need more energy from their teacher, but you were good at it. I think you’d be a good teacher.”
He scratched his cheek, feeling a little apprehensive. “You think I should be in charge of educating future generations of Aorírdal kids?”
“I mean, think about it,” Qianii said, moving up with the line along with Xenith. “You complained a lot about wanting to change things; now’s your chance!” She paused. “I’m sure you heard people’s thoughts in there, right? Easier for the little kids since they don’t really have any way to block it, but older kids? I don’t want to know what kind of mess that would be to wade through. I would’ve killed to have your ability in that last class.”
“You still did amazing without it, Qianii,” he said honestly. “Yeah, it’s easier for me cuz I know what’s going on in their head, but you? You read their body language and kept in mind everything else, and you still mediated very well. You did it without telepathy, and that is impressive.”
“Well, I won’t deny that,” she said with bright eyes, and he chuckled. “But there is a difference between knowing what is going on versus saying the right thing. You still did the right thing, I believe.”
Xenith hesitated. He didn’t know how he felt about today, and he needed to be alone to think about it, but in all honesty, this experience had felt the most rewarding. “Thanks, Qianii.” He patted her bony shoulder. “Thanks for insisting on getting me to observe with you. I would have been terrified if it weren’t for you.”
“Little less scary to do it with another person,” she eyed him warmly. “Things are a little easier with friends.”
They both turned their heads when they heard a slight commotion behind them, Nentok edging in and out of the line looking for them. “Yeah, it really is,” he answered as he waved Nentok over, smiling. He may not know exactly what he planned to do, but his friends had been with him since his first day of class and now during their deliberation of a profession. Nentok still ribbed him, Qianii kept encouraging him, Zander cheered him on, and Mato always believed in him.
Perhaps he wasn’t so alone, after all.
∆∆∆
Later that week, after spending a few days thinking to himself and visiting classrooms, he sat down at his computer late at night. He typed up a message, proofread it, then sent it to Lelich Vaziri, the Lelich of Education. Switching off his computer, he laid down on his bed and smiled as he drifted off to sleep, feeling a sense of purpose for the first time in his life.
Seventeen
It didn’t take long for Ayzize to become embroiled in something other than his argument with Celes. A XIK attack on an Iaiedal colony sent him immediately traveling across a quarter of the galaxy, and he didn’t get to say goodbye to Celes. His throat had constricted at the thought of messaging her as he traveled, so he absolved to do something about it later. He still toyed with the idea of asking Doth to reassign her, but the thought still made the pit of his stomach twist in worry.
After five days with two XIKs dead, several casualties, and a city-wide quarantine, Ayzize waited for Raxdrýn’s Biohazard team to arrive. The situation had been far worse than his last XIK hunt on Endeavor. Raxdrýn paid for a hotel for Ayzize to stay at, and he obliged to help the Biohazard team the next morning.
That night, Ayzize locked himself in his room with a simple bed and desk, poring over holo screens that lit the room. The window overlooked the small Iaiedal city. In the distance he could make out the grassy plains beyond the strip of tall, bulbous buildings. He hadn’t created Celes’ schedule before he had left, and he looked over the one Kyr had made for her in Ayzize’s stead. Physical training in the morning; lessons of math, science, and history in the afternoon. Cardio every other day, weight training in between, with weapons training twice a week and psy-abilities every day. Celes needed remedial education, which Kyr packed into the evenings. While Ayzize wouldn’t get heavily involved in training until she completed basic, he still took it seriously. Now that she would be a partial Varôk, he had to ensure she could survive.
A light flickered in the corner of his eyes, and his spirits lifted. He lit up the small room and dispersed the small holo screens, tapping the side of his head to allow the Tristat to arc over his eyes. He received a regular call instead of an AR one, so Imbiana had to be in a more remote area of the galaxy.
Accepting the call, a square flickered over the wall in his Tristat, showing Imbiana from the waist up sitting at a desk. Her face looked tranquil and her steel-grey eyes were bold as ever, and he sighed, feeling as though he could relax for the first time in weeks.
“Hey, how’ve you been?” Her face lit up in a smile, though she scrutinized his face. “You look tired.”
“Nice to see you too,” he smiled. “And a bit; just got done with a job. Seeing you has given me some years back to my life.”
She rolled her eyes, though she kept a smile. “You’re cute. Do you want to talk about it?”
“I’d rather not get into it right now;” he said honestly, stretching out a little. “Nothing too bad happened; some things I’m not allowed to say and the rest I’d rather wait to talk about. Right now, I want to hear about how you’re doing and any discoveries you might have made.”
She smirked, since she couldn’t resist telling about her latest excursions. “Before I go into what I can talk about, are you sure you’re OK for now? You seem a little off.”
“I really could use hearing your voice first. I promise that I’m fine,” he said, keeping his smile.
She still regarded him suspiciously, though her excitement took over. “OK, so last time, I told you we’re going into training exercises, right?”
“Right.”
“So, while I can’t tell you where we actually went,” though she had a mischievous grin like she wanted to, “it was amazing. Definitely not a waste of time like we had thought it would be. It was beautiful, haunting, isolated, and so alien.”
He paused. Last time, she had speculated that they would head for Osaŵ territory. While Imbiana found all of space beautiful, he wouldn’t call the densely populated Osaŵ territory ‘isolated and alien’. Space looked the same no matter the territory. “Any pictures you can show?”
“No,” she said, grimacing in disappointment. “And they came out gorgeously too. I really want to talk about it, but I’m not allowed to. Ugh, if only I could take you with me!”
“You’re exploring space to experience the unknown, not to gossip about it,” he reminded her.
She scowled. “But discovery leads to knowledge, or at least making a connection with another person. If you want to twist it, gossiping could be a legitimate conduit for that connection. Keyword: twist.”
He remembered Celes running around to alien species when in the orbital stations or gluing herself to observatory windows. He had felt exasperated then, but now? Imbiana may not run up to aliens and start bombarding them with questions, but her excitement of seeing something unknown with a sidepiece of connection was just so simply explained. He felt rather guilty that he loved and encouraged it with Imbiana but felt annoyed when Celes did it so childishly, despite being only ten years old.
“Hm, true,” he shrugged. “So, you had a wonderful and amazing training exercise that you can’t talk about with lots of pictures that you can’t show. It must be killing you.”
“It is!” She put a hand on her forehead dramatically to make him chuckle. “The second it is declassified I’m throwing the pictures in your face.”
“Better yet, why don’t you show me in person on your own ship?” he teased. Imbiana had risen through the ranks of Earth’s top military academy with the best grades in all six years, and upon gra
duating didn’t slow down. She had completed half of her goal: she now served the GA Explore Corp, and the last half of receiving her own command and freighter was within her grasp.
“Just because I’ll get the ship doesn’t mean I can take anyone on it for a joyride,” she muttered. “I’m still a good decade off from getting said ship, anyway. I may be good, but I want to be smart about it. Getting my own command just because I want it, but not yet ready for, would be disastrous.”
“You can be ready for something and it still turns out to be a disaster,” Ayzize pointed out.
“Fair point. Speaking of which,” she leaned towards him, “you never messaged about what happened back on Endeavor. What did you end up doing?” She craned her neck to peer over his shoulder, as if expecting to see a kid running around behind him.
Oh, no. She will lecture me on this, I just know it, he thought, then launched into what had happened the past few weeks. Imbiana kept her face even the entire time, nodding in the right places, smiling when he had chosen Celes and her running around the stations, and frowning when he stated an edited version of his conversations with Doth.
“So, Celes is adjusting well?” Imbiana asked.
“Erm,” he glanced to the side, remembering Celes storming off, “sort of.”
“What do you mean, ‘sort of’?” Her tone sounded like his mother’s when she had caught him doing something wrong.
He cleared his throat. “She’s getting along much better with her peers at Raxdrýn than she did back on Endeavor,” he said truthfully. “In actuality, I’m astounded about how well she’s adjusted; filled with a million and one questions, but other than that, she’s been taking it well.”
“It sounds like she is a very brave girl,” Imbiana smiled. “If it is OK with her, I would like to see what she looks like, and to talk to her if she wants to.”
“Oh, sure, I can bring it up with her sometime,” he said, not meeting her gaze. That is if Celes even wants to see me again.
“Got several questions for you,” Imbiana said in nonchalance, but when he looked up at her, she looked suspicious. “You said she’s been very excitable and eager to learn. Has she been nervous at all, besides going through the Liet gates and meeting the other kids?”
“Mmm,” he frowned, thinking. “Not that I’ve seen.”
“Any crying? Withdrawal? Angry outbursts?” Imbiana ticked the list off her long fingers. “If she hasn’t done it already, then—” she looked up to Ayzize and must have spotted his guilt, since she folded her arms. “All right, what happened?”
“What?”
“You’ve been avoiding my eyes when I say certain things and you’re not as sarcastic as you usually are. So, what happened?”
Though Ayzize really did not want to tell Imbiana what happened, he did so anyway. Imbiana’s frown deepened the more he talked, and by the time he told of Celes running out of the room and him potentially asking someone else to mentor her, Imbiana had leaned back in her chair, arms crossed, with a glare on her face.
“I'm sorry, you want to what now?” Imbiana asked stiffly.
“I know, I know, I probably should have explained it better, and I didn't say that I would definitely stop mentoring her,” Ayzize said, though Imbiana didn’t soften at all. “That doesn't change the fact that she needs to learn boundaries, and cannot be asking prying questions all the time.”
“So you told a ten year old who just left a traumatic situation to basically shut down.”
Ayzize threw up his hands. “Give me a break, Imbiana. Just before all of this, in things I cannot go into, shit hit the fan. The thing I can tell you, is that Doth made the recruits become Varôk and security. If Celes doesn’t understand up front how things need to be, then she might die.”
“So, instead of being honest with her, you decided to shut down and teach her how to shut down around you.”
He should have known Imbiana's perception would get to the root of the problem, but he still found himself defensively saying, “I don’t owe it to her to explain—”
“Ayzize Kwadwo Waya Nelowie. Yes. You. Do.” Imbiana leaned forward, looking at him dangerously through her camera. “You took that girl off that planet to throw at XIKs. I know you thought she would go into security, but isn’t what ended up happening. You joined to avenge your parents, and you understand that kid better than anyone in that entire complex, but you may have screwed that up. You think she’s just going to put it behind her and then get her butt in gear and listen to everything you say just because you told her ‘tough, that’s how it is’? You said that she made her own way when life dealt her the hand of an alcoholic father who yelled at her all the time; what makes you think this will be any different?”
“Because she could die,” he argued back. “She’s smart, and she knows that. I know the stakes better than anyone, and I don’t want her to be caught unprepared, but she needs to learn things now before it is too late.”
“You are not making her mentally tough by pushing her away.” Imbiana rubbed her forehead. “Look, I can’t imagine what it is like to have a kid just tossed in your lap and now you’re responsible for her wellbeing, on top of everything else. I know it is easy for me to sit here and lecture you on what’s wrong and what’s right, but here’s what else I know.” She jabbed a finger at him, staring into his eyes. “You are better than this.”
Ayzize stayed silent for a few moments, staring at the floor. “Am I, though?”
Imbiana made a sound of disgust and impatience. “I will chalk that up to self-pity and a realization of what you did wrong. Yes, you are, and if Celes had run off, she knows it too. Does she need to learn the things you need her to? Absolutely, since you are a professional, and she needs to listen. Is there a better way to make her understand than cutting off a connection with her when both of you are tired and confused? Yes.”
Ayzize paused, holding back from a knee-jerk reaction of brushing her off, and listened. ... Imbiana’s right. As usual, he thought, chuckling to himself as he shook his head. The thought of continuing to be Celes' mentor did untie the knot of worry a little. “You have a point, but I don’t know how to make it up to her. I’ve been trying to figure it out.”
“The net can work wonders, you know. And I doubt you are the first mentor there that got into a fight with their apprentice, and certainly not the first parental figure.” Softening, she added, “You may also want to... investigate moving on. Seriously, this time.”
“And here I thought seven years of pushing emotional trauma down and not dealing with it was helpful,” he said, and at her frown, “I was joking.”
“You weren’t,” she said, her arms still crossed. “If not for yourself, at least try for Celes. You know I love you, and I know you care about Celes. If you apologize with sincerity, it is a starting point at least.”
He thought back to his parents, as much as it still hurt. When he and his father had argued, and his father had been in the wrong, his father had always owned up to it and readily. Ayzize had always respected him for it.
Ayzize nodded, hoping that apologizing would help heal the rift between him and Celes. “Thank you, Imbiana.”
She smiled. “Of course, Ayzize.”
He and Imbiana spoke for a few more minutes before she had to return to her duties. Once they said their goodbyes, Ayzize sat in silence for a few moments, then with a glance to the schedule, got up from his chair, walking to the bed where his coat lay. Searching his pockets, he retrieved a shell necklace, a small outline carved into the polished surface. I think it is about time I finished this, he thought as he withdrew a small laser cutter, sitting back at his desk and setting to work.
∆∆∆
It took him another two days to return to Tezěkír, and he checked his messages whenever the jumper ships reached comm buoys. Several more schedule updates, confirmation of his last job from Doth, Imbiana sending him encouragement, but none from Celes. He spent the mag-train ride to Raxdrýn smoothing out the neckla
ce, wondering if her anger had festered in his absence.
He arrived at dusk and upon going through decon and postponing his debriefing with Doth, Ayzize made a beeline for the residence hall. The kids on the third floor seemed to have worn each other out, since no kids ran around screaming like they had two weeks ago. Most of the kids sat in tight circles, talking or playing games, while others visited each other, the doors open. He got a few curious looks, but they otherwise ignored him.
Stopping at Celes’ room, he felt nervous, but quelled it enough to knock on the door. After a few seconds the door swooshed open to reveal Aloi, arms crossed and craning her neck to glare up at him, while Lyati sat on her bed, still reading her holo screens. Celes was absent.
“Oh, it’s you,” Aloi said with gritted, pointed teeth, her earlier awe gone. “What do you want?”
“To see Celes.” While a little irked that a recruit was giving him attitude, he had a feeling that they knew what had happened. “Did she tell you...”
“That you made her mad or sad? No,” Aloi scowled. “But we’re not stupid. She was leaking water from her eyes before you left a week ago.”
“She was fine when she left with you, then wished to be alone, with ‘tears’ on her face after seeing you,” Lyati said, a slight edge to her voice. She still didn’t look over at him, but he felt anger directed towards him from her EmTel. “Odd that humans waste water that way, but still, rather obvious that she was mad or sad. Easy to figure out something happened when you two were talking.”
“Yeah, so unless you’re going to find her and apologize for being a jerk, we’re not telling you where she is,” Aloi hissed, keeping her glare on him as if daring him to start a fight.
“Actually, that is what I am going to do,” Ayzize said, looking between the two of them. “I wanted to tell her in person. Can you tell me where to find her?”
Aloi blinked both sets of eyelids, looking surprised, and looked back at Lyati. Lyati turned her head to Aloi, then looked to Ayzize, her eyes widening to study him. Lyre Selyn had weaker vision than humans and widening their eyes allowed them to see greater distances.
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