“Reza,” she said quietly as she stepped onto the balcony, ignoring the throbbing pain in her shin where she’d hit the coffee table, “are you okay?” She still felt a tingle of fear, and she now knew why: the Reza she was looking at was a Kreelan warrior priest, not merely a captain in the Confederation Marine Corps. That is why she had felt so strange just a moment ago. Something inside her had known that he had let slip his human mask.
She shook the feeling off, trying to concentrate as she knelt beside him. “Honey, what’s wrong?” she whispered, tentatively reaching out to touch his arm. It was so hot that it was painful to her touch.
“I… I cannot go on,” Reza rasped through gritted teeth. “The pain, Jodi… I thought I had banished it forever with Nicole’s help, but the pain has returned. My blood is fire, my heart an angry wound, for I cannot clear the memory of my love’s face from my mind. I would rejoice for Nicole’s happiness, but it has brought back too many memories. Molten steel sears my veins… it is too much.”
It was then that she saw the knife that he held with both hands. It was the weapon he was most fond of, a beautiful but deadly dagger that she had never known him to let out of his sight.
“So what are you going to do?” she asked bluntly. “Just kill yourself and be done with everything? Is that how Kreelan warrior priests get out of tough spots – just ram a knife through their throats?”
Reza turned to glare at her, and without the booze she might have wilted under such a withering assault from his swirling green eyes, but not now. Not tonight.
“Let me tell you something, tough guy,” she went on, moving closer to him, their noses only a hand’s breadth apart, “you don’t have a monopoly on heartache. How do you think I feel after watching the only person I’ve ever really loved marry a good friend? And how do you think I feel about being jealous as hell of him, so jealous that I couldn’t even bring myself to say goodbye to either of them before they left for their honeymoon? And I was her maid of honor! What a fucking joke that is!” She tried to laugh, but strangled on a sob as she reached out and grabbed him by the shoulders, ignoring the heat that burned its way into her palms from the metal armor and his searing flesh beneath. “So I don’t want to be hearing any of this shit about how your heart is tearing itself to pieces, Reza, because mine is, too, and I need you now, damn you, I need you so much, you’re all I’ve got left. You promised me you’d be there when I needed you, Reza. You promised me, dammit! Don’t you leave me, too. Don’t you dare…”
Then she reached for him, wrapping her arms around his neck as if she were drowning, just as she had when he had pulled her from the river on Rutan so many years ago, and he was honor-bound to save her. Careful not to tear her clothing or skin with the talons on his gauntlets, he drew her to him, shielding her with his arms as he commanded his body to cool while fighting a savage battle with the loneliness that burned in his blood. The knife he laid carefully beside him. He still longed for its cold metal touch, for the release from the hell that his existence had once again become. He was so happy for Nicole and Tony, but what he felt reminded him too much of his life with Esah-Zhurah, as if he had been forced to relive it. And with those thoughts, those feelings, once again had come the burning agony of loss that was as powerful as when he had first left the Empire.
Silently, he cradled Jodi in his arms as she cried, doing his best to isolate himself from the past, closing off the universe beyond this woman, his friend, to whom he owed a debt of love.
Jodi didn’t realize that she had fallen asleep until she noticed that she no longer felt the hot steel of Reza’s armor pressing against her. Instead, her body was nestled against something warm and firm, but made of flesh, not metal.
She opened her eyes to find herself still out on the balcony with him, but he had taken off his armor and gathered her up to lay beside him in a padded chaise built for two. He had one arm wrapped around her, holding her to him, with her head resting on his powerful shoulder. The night air was warm enough that she didn’t need a blanket, Reza’s body providing all the warmth she needed. Above her, the stars still shone, and she guessed – hoped – that only a little time had passed, and that the night had not yet begun to wane toward morning.
“Reza,” she whispered, “are you awake?”
“Yes,” he replied, instinctively holding her just a bit tighter. “I have not yet found… sleep.”
Peace, she thought he meant. He had not found the peace he was looking for, and probably never would. Just like her. A thought, quite alien to her way of thinking, began to uncoil in the back of her mind, stretching like an awakening lion. She reached out and touched Reza’s face, much as he had done to her on the day that he had first appeared before her like an unholy apparition in Father Hernandez’s rectory. How lonely he had been then; how lonely they both were now. “Tell me about her,” she said, gently turning his face toward hers, “tell me about the woman you love.”
Reza hesitated, but only for a moment. What does it matter? he told himself through the red haze that had settled over his mind like the acrid smoke that is all that is left after a fierce battle, one that leaves no one alive, no victors, only the vanquished. Telling her of his love was certainly no betrayal to the Empire. And, perhaps – just perhaps – sharing his pain with her might in some way help rejuvenate the emotional shield that Nicole’s blood in his veins had provided him over the years, that now had failed him in the face of an onslaught of memories that he could not control.
“Her name,” he said, forcing his tongue to work within the numbed orifice his mouth had become, “is Esah-Zhurah…”
Jodi listened intently as Reza wove the tale that had been his life with an alien woman whom he had once hated, yet had finally come to love with all his heart.
He and I have so much in common, she thought in the depths of her mind. There is so much in common between us, and yet so little in common with those around us. She realized then that she wanted Reza to heal her, just as she wanted to heal him. She wanted the pain to be gone, if only for a moment, for both of them.
In that moment she did something that she never thought she would do: she kissed a man. Not as a friend, or as a stunt, but with passion, with desire. She thought she could only want a woman, but Reza was so different from all the other men she had ever known, and that difference somehow made it seem right to her. She pressed her lips to his as she pulled him against her, wrapping her arms around his neck, entwining her fingers in the braids of his hair.
“Jodi,” Reza rasped as he tried to pull himself away, “I cannot…”
“I don’t want to have to explain this to you, dammit,” she sighed as she again pulled him to her, harder than before. “I need an escape, Reza, and you’re it. Just pretend… pretend that I’m Esah-Zhurah. I don’t want you to fall in love with me. I just want you to hold me, to be… a part of me for a while. To take the pain away. And let me do the same for you. Just for a little while…”
Reza suddenly shuddered against her, as if he were fighting off a terrible fever.
But then she sensed a change in him, perhaps a kind of acceptance of what was, what he wished could be. Their lips met again, but this time it was Reza who kissed her. Her body tingled as she felt his powerful hands touch her, tentatively at first, but then with growing confidence as they sought out the catches to her clothing.