by Noah Harris
Alden takes an hour to come back to consciousness after the crash. It’s not scary, it’s just lonely. A series of unanswerable, horrible questions I can’t evade or escape.
Am I relieved we survived, or sad they didn’t? Do I hope Pippa’s alive, or do I hope she died quickly? Will we survive, or will we end up wishing we’d died quickly? Is he injured? If so, can I do this on my own? What’s the protocol?
Alden would know. He knows every possibility, he’s got every angle covered. As anxious as I am, as trapped and afraid, the only thing that keeps me from shaking him awake is the fear of aggravating some internal injury I can’t see. Maybe I could go back to sleep and find him there.
It all just starts to sound crazy. For a moment, I have myself convinced the whole shifter thing is just some kind of lunar psychosis I invented on this trip. Or that he’s the shifter and I’m the innocent bystander. Or this is all a big prank, or maybe something Margot devised for ratings.
I remember landing, a loud painful crash and a very bright light. Before that, it’s a blur. I remember holding Alden’s hand, floating free in the infinity of the night. I remember him kissing me up there, hard, breathing me in with desperate hunger. And then shifting, suddenly alpha. I remember seeing that but can’t really believe it.
Brushing one lock of hair from his unworried, sleeping brow, I can’t help but wonder what they did to him. How do you go twenty-odd years without noticing you’re a shifter? Or gay, for that matter? What a painful way to grow up.
Terrible, yes. But a way to grow up strong, too. Which is how I know he’s going to make it. The things that don’t kill us don’t always make us stronger, but I know they make us tougher.
If we don’t break first.
“Okay, Cortez. We’re both strapped in. Run through it again.”
Alden knew the plan, of course. He’d probably already run the math himself, a million times. But I also knew he wouldn’t stop until it was all over, or he found a better alternative. He was trying to pick her plan apart and do something with the pieces.
“You’re both suited up, helmets on, extra tanks secured?”
Check, check, check. No idea how to change an oxygen supply tank in 400-degree heat, on an airless chunk of rock? Also check.
“What we have going for us is mass. I won’t even have to push you that hard and you’ll go wherever I say. The gravity of other bodies, whatever anomalies, won’t do anything to you, so we don’t have to factor them in. It’s the simplest math we’ll ever do.”
I laughed. Of course, it was. No pressure!
“The tightest part is the window, because none of us have the time to try this twice. So, when it’s go, it’s go. No looking back. Got that?”
I found I couldn’t really speak anymore, but Alden choked out a yes for us both.
“It is going to suck. Not the middle part, but the initial shove. And then the landing, which is…which gives you better odds of living than anything else I can think of.”
Nice swerve, I thought, but I appreciated it. We weren’t the only problem she was trying to solve.
“Once you make the hard landing and you’re able to move, get on with it. I’ll have a roller homing in on you from the time you hit. Hopefully it won’t take long. If I really crush this, you’ll land next to Tiptree itself, or at least close enough to walk. Just stay out of the heat and conserve your air just in case.”
I wanted to ask, but I really didn’t want to know the answer, exactly how great the force would be, in the initial blast and crash. Just trust Pippa and these machines, I said to myself, and tried to believe it. Better to focus on doing what I could to relax. I remember I was glad we were in suits, because I could smell my fear, and I didn’t want Alden to catch it.
“And you? Where are you?”
She sighed, not frightened; she sounded resigned.
“I’m coming in hot, and hopefully crash-landing somewhere on the moon. And if not, well…maybe I ricochet off her gravity deeper into space. There’s technically even a way to slingshot back toward Earth, but since I’m not a computer, a hard landing is the best option.”
Into the silence, her voice crackling as the intermittent static started up again, she laughed to herself.
“Just…make sure.”
“Of course,” we chorused, tearing up this time.
My tears were hot, angry that we couldn’t think of a better way to save everybody. But for Alden, I think it was finally all hitting him at once. Maybe a white-knuckle ride through space is exactly what he needs, I thought, and couldn’t decide if that was more uncharitable or unselfish of me. I was going to be on that ride too.
“And one more thing?” her voice was softer, a little edgier. Embarrassed, maybe?
“Yes, Pippa,” I said, taking over for him. By the clock, we had about ninety seconds.
“I saw what I saw. Didn’t I? You can tell me.”
Alden gasped, but he was smiling through his tears, nodding. “I wanted to tell you. I was thinking about it, after we got off the station. I wanted you to know that the world was magic, and you were…I wanted you to be part of that.”
“Okay. Thank you for that. See you in a bit.”
And without further ado, Pippa fired her jets, crashing the shuttle into us with a smash we felt through our whole bodies. She launched us off at a new, scary angle, and herself into the distance.
When Alden finally wakes, it’s with a luxurious stretch and sleepy smile, like he’s waking up on the first morning of our honeymoon. I’m afraid to break the spell, in case he’s forgotten all we lost or where we are, so, I smile back. But there’s a sadness behind his eyes soon enough. He’s smiling because we’re together and alive. It’s the only reason we have. He reaches over and pulls me close, wrapping my tinfoil blanket around us both.
“Now we’re…” he says sleepily. “A baked potato.”
Snuggling close, I laugh. Breathing in the smell and feel of him. A month ago, we hated each other. Or at least we thought we did. But instead of just a week or two, it feels like forever.
“I was so scared, Julian. I dreamt you fell asleep with a concussion. Do you know how dangerous that is?”
I smile. Of all the things to worry about, first-aid for imaginary head trauma is low on the list.
“I’m not too worried, at this point,” I say, playing my fingers between his. Learning his hands. “Look at us. We fired ourselves, like a gun, at the moon. And survived the journey.”
“No. That was Philippa.”
I pull away, turning quietly to face him. The heat in his voice.
“What?”
“Pippa did that. Shot us at the moon. All I did was let them all die. Pip saved us.”
“Sure,” I say, sitting up to look him square in the eye, so I know he hears me. “And it was me that saved them, and it was Margot who chased you around with an assault rifle, and Philippa who thought you were a howling monster wolfman…”
Alden jumps, staring, and I realize I’m taking my grief out on him. Time to refocus.
“Sorry. You and I, we lived. Let’s not complicate that. They were good soldiers, good friends, good astronauts. They made it possible for us to live. Let’s honor that.”
Alden nods, lying back against a crate glumly. Snuggle time is over.
“It’s just weird. To be sitting here about to eat, about to open a brand-new colony. And they won’t see that, they won’t ever eat anything again.”
“You’re in shock.”
He nods, like it’s obvious. “I mean…I’m sure we both are. I don’t think the human body is made to absorb this much trauma. Space travel, moon madness and love, rockets and explosions, and I’m a werewolf, and…”
Alden starts laughing, so I start laughing, too. But it’s clear almost immediately that he can’t stop. His eyes get wide with worry as he doubles over, stomach cramping under his hands. I cross the space between us in a flash, flowing like water. My arms around his neck, turning his eyes up to meet min
e.
“Hey. You’re flipping out. That’s okay, but it’s safer if you know that you’re flipping out. You have every right to. But when I said you were in shock, I meant it. Physically. Medically. I need you to drink some water, wrap up tight in this blanket, and concentrate on your breathing, until things start to make sense again.”
“Thank you, Julian.”
“Don’t thank me. Because the second you have your shit together, I absolutely plan on falling apart. And I’m going to need you for that.”
The first ten minutes after the shove were absolutely terrifying. But after about thirty minutes, we decided we were both steady enough to unclasp and “move about the cabin,” as Alden said nervously.
He always seems funnier to me when he’s distracted. Like he forgets to be Alden Armstrong for a second. The warning lights in our little compartment painted him blue and beautiful, and I worried about the amount of space between us. Every part of my body wanted to kick off toward him, just as hard and fast as Pippa’s shove. But before we’d almost died three times in a row, things had gotten scary enough for him. I needed him to Alden up and make the first move...but that didn’t seem fair either. I had the answers, he had the questions. He’d just uncovered a secret about himself that I’d known and kept about myself since birth. There was so much he needed to know, I couldn’t even imagine it all. How to begin?
“I know so much stuff that you need to know, but I don’t know what you want to know. There’s stuff I haven’t thought twice about, that could be legitimately confusing for you.”
He nodded at that, with a friendly smile. He’d obviously thought about that too, but from across the module I couldn’t read his energy at all. He’d shut down, in shock maybe. Try again.
“From landing at the waystation to right now feels like about a year. I wonder why time got all stretched out like that? Do you think it’s trauma?”
“I think it’s love,” he said, without missing a beat. Which was comforting, as he knew it would be. We were struggling toward solid ground again, taking care of each other.
Or were we? There was a needy, almost petulant edge to it. Like I’d somehow offended him. Or maybe I was making that up, too. The shadow in his eyes said I wasn’t.
“When we couldn’t breathe, in the data gallery. I said I would follow you anywhere. I remember that. I remember how badly…I would have killed myself, if you’d asked me to do it. And that wasn’t hypoxia, that was something else.”
Oh! I thought. Damn it. It made sense. I’d been too deliriously happy to think about how fast he was changing.
“It’s not how you think, I’m not…”
“I mean, what’s more likely? That I just forgot I was a werewolf for twenty-something years? Or that you did something to me? That you’re still doing something?”
I could smell it on his skin, now. He was getting angry. Not just Alden Armstrong angry, which is icy, always cool and collected. He was getting alpha mad. Mad in the blood. Berserker mad.
You have to try and not shrink away. They say weakness triggers it. I told myself.
I held my arms wide apart, to look as big as I could, and faced him squarely.
“Cool your jets, cadet.”
He looked away for a moment, checking himself, then nodded. He could feel it, when I gave him a second to think. He could feel the wildness in him, rising, which meant we were still safe.
“Now, if you’re heading down that road I can’t stop you. I can just tell you what it’s like for me. Which is that I love you completely, and I have since that first day when you wouldn’t bunk with me. I’ve always known it. And I’ve always known I needed to keep this part of myself secret. So now we have a problem.”
He nodded, hooking his arms back into the straps so he could at least pretend to sit down while he thought about it. It was such a cute, human gesture I almost forgot what we were dealing with.
Hundreds of miles per hour, in a pressurized tin-can, hours from slamming into a moon. With a scared, newborn shifter, and the heat in me already rising.
Alden shivers under the blanket, as ordered. It isn’t our comfy nest up in the sky, or even the sleep sacks we used on the shuttle, but it’s warm enough, and the spongy flooring of our little piece of wreckage isn’t uncomfortable. When he sleeps, it’s the sleep of a sane, dreaming man.
The dreams seem full of sadness, wolves at the edge of his vision, prowling the forest. But he doesn’t wake up. He kicks, moans, and screams, but he stays down. And I watch, and weep. I can feel it through his skin, and when I close my eyes and smell him, I can almost see them. Another part of love I thought was just an omega myth.
Beautiful things shouldn’t suffer like this, I think. How sad, for a man who has never had a problem in his entire life, never felt pain, loss, fear or doubt, not even for a moment. This must be tearing him up. It’s killing me, and my life was...I’m really not being fair.
Whatever Alden’s folks did to him, I have to assume it messed him up. Enough that he kept himself from shifting, or even being gay, just by sheer force of will. That’s the kind of strength that comes from suffering, too, and maybe we have that in common. It’s not a comforting thought, but it’s enough. I can finally lay beside him and sleep. Just for a little while.
He has needs, I think, waking up against him an hour or so later. Alpha needs. I’ve been taught those my whole life, and how to serve them. What does he need from me now, with his dreams full of shadows and his ears full of blood?
Death comes to the door, that’s what they say. For your omega, for your pups. He stands just outside, always. Like humans, and fire, and things only the wolves remember. And it’s the alpha’s job to fight him and keep him from the door. Bravely, viciously, brutally, continually. As the omega creates life, the alpha protects and preserves it.
He needs a ritual. A ceremony. Some kind of closure. He can’t fight this death, he didn’t stop it, he couldn’t stop it. He won’t be whole again until the story’s over.
He needs to bury his dead, I think, before we can both move on. Then his shivering will stop, and we can make our way to the base. And he can carry me, if I need it.
And so, when he awakes, I’ve gathered all their things I could find, in the wreckage. Pippa’s first-aid kit, and several cases from the seed vault she was meaning to cultivate here, for our future colonists. Harbaugh’s shaving gear, and his captain’s jumpsuit and bars. Margot Hellstrom’s journal, a cracked tablet nobody will ever open. I don’t think she’d want us to, anyhow. And that makes it a perfect monument to her, I think. A book that would never let me read it.
He knows, when he wakes up, what I’ve been planning. I wait to see what he’ll do with them. I pictured a eulogy, or a howling, like at home, maybe a bonfire. But instead, he gathers them all in his arms, and takes them out into the circle of our wreckage.
Looking out at the peaks, the edge of our crater, for just the right spot, he nods. Digs down into the hot, hard white rock. It’s slow work, but he gets through the dust and debris to the solid bedrock eventually. There’s no wind, no atmosphere, so until somebody comes along and changes it, whatever he does is forever. Like the scar we left when we crashed.
Alden puts each item in their little graves, as I watch from the window, mic off. Maybe he says words, maybe he doesn’t. Maybe he prays. Whatever it is, it’s between him and the moon.
I think I cry for them. Maybe I’m crying for him, maybe just for myself. I’m not sure which would be best.
When he’s done, and back in our little temporary hold, I take his hand and bring him to the window where I watched him, and we look out over it together. The three mounds for the fallen, their names carefully etched into the stone.
Forever.
After our fight, the little tin-can seemed much smaller and more fragile. Looking out the window at the sky didn’t do anything, since the stars were too far away to whoosh past us. And from this angle we wouldn’t see the moon coming at us until we were a lot close
r.
He strapped himself into a chair, so I did the same. Fuming at him for even thinking I would ever put a spell on him. I knew it must feel that way, of course. I felt every bit as bewitched by him. But it felt so ugly, terrifying, treacherous, to imagine him thinking I’d take away his freedom like that.
Did he honestly wonder if I somehow made him gay, too? There’s so much to be afraid of, in this life. I didn’t want to be another thing for him to fear.
Maybe I was so angry because that was exactly what I feared, too. A grownup would say this stuff, instead of just thinking it, I thought. So, I did.
“All my life, I’ve been taught that my effect on men is something I can control, and something that makes me a threat. It’s a reason to be ashamed. And if I can’t control it, well, that must mean I’m choosing it. I must be dirty, on a level I don’t even know about.”
He swung his head around sharply, angry, haunted and hurt. But I held up a hand and continued.
“But until I met you, I didn’t understand how overwhelming all this stuff could be. Love. Sex. I think I just assumed I was under some magical spell, too. I feel like nothing is my choice, like my wanting you is making all the decisions for me. And that’s almost scary. I mean, it is scary. But at least I know what it looks like.”
His hooded eyes met mine again, this time with something approaching gratitude, and then he put even more behind his gaze. All the heat and tenderness he could muster. You have to know that we’re okay, he was saying. And I had to know it without him uttering a single word.
“So, I thought, let’s use this time productively. There’s nowhere else I’d rather be than with you, and I’m with you right here, so I’m good. In this death trap. And we have hours, and hours until we hit the moon. Just ask me whatever questions you have. Let’s try it again.”
Reassured, he collected himself, nodding enthusiastically. Of course, he’d been sitting on a ton of them.
