Galaxy of Scars

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    Content warning: Implied/referenced past self-harm.

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Earth, post-Calamity

He sat on the exam table, looking down at his lap as I poked and prodded at him. I was trying to assess his condition, which was hard without a baseline; my life’s work had centred around humans, not such otherworldly alien creatures.

I raised my hand in front of me, and he flinched back. Alarmed, I broke the silence that had long been hanging over us.

“I just need you to try touching my hand, then your nose. Can you do that for me?”

He blinked at me for a moment, those big, heterochromatic eyes flitting around my body as if he was trying to make a threat assessment. Despite not having much in the way of facial expressions, his porcelain skin smooth and almost statuesque, he wasn’t devoid of them entirely. I noted the slight tilt of normally straight eyebrows, the constricted pupils, his balled fists. He was afraid.

“I am not going to hurt you,” I reassured him, smiling down at my patient as I lowered my hand. “I won’t hit you, or anything like that. I want to help.”

His eyes snapped up, then slowly lowered again. He crossed his arms over his stomach, stiffly pressing them against the concave surface. “Of course not. I would be stupid to assume that.”

“It’s not stupid,” I argued, but kept my tone gentle. “You have been through a lot, that much is evident. I would be a negligent doctor not to notice such things.”

“Oh.” He moved his arms again, this time holding them behind his back. The hospital gown was all but engulfing him, its short sleeves reaching all the way to his elbows; and yet he seemed to be trying to retreat within it even more. “How did you notice?”

“You are so small, I can fit my hands around your waist! That isn’t exactly indicative of good formative years, especially in relation to what you’ve told me of your species,” I explained, watching him carefully as I spoke. “Besides, even if that was a regular trait of you keplers, that doesn’t explain–”

I reached for one of his arms, but when my gloved fingers made contact with his forearm, he flinched again. I tried to bring it out in front of him, but he seemed to be unwilling to show me the limb, unlike how easily he let me lead him around and manipulate other parts of his body.

Conceding, I let go, straightening back up; I spent a long moment looking at him, really looking at him, and then I sighed softly. He didn’t want to be seen, not yet at least.

“My apologies. I… I simply…”

I care about you, is what I wanted to say. I want you to be alright was another, along with please let me help you. But then it was my turn to look away, for if I looked a second longer at his pitiful body, it would all come spilling out. I couldn’t put the burden of my feelings on him, not after everything he was already experiencing.

“Well then,” I finally continued, internally forcing the thoughts to halt in their tracks. “How about we get you fed, so that you can rest for the night? You must be tired, and we can finish this tomorrow.”

He nodded, but didn’t verbalise anything. My heart sank at his silence, but I kept a warm smile on my face as I helped him stand, struggling to resist the urge to hold him closer to me as I guided him out of the room and down the hallway.

Space, in transit to Kepler

It was night– at least, what the crew of the vessel designated to be night. The lights were off, but the blur of the cosmos filtered through the tinted windows, providing a soft glow that cast the alien in an ethereal beauty.

His light hair lay in a messy halo on the pillow, locks framing the angelic features of his sleeping face. Laid out on the grey sheets, his skin appeared pure white if not for the subtle flush at each joint; small, parallel ridges ran in groups over the surface of his limbs, ones that he’d just recently stopped hiding under long sleeves and trousers.

I’d admired him ever since he’d fallen asleep, watched his little chest rise and fall as he dreamt. I’d done it every night, the lovely perk of being assigned to the same room. The lovely perk of being the only two assigned to this room.

My hand crept towards his forearm, resting by his head with its hand resting on the pillow. My fingers brushed over it, bare, no longer barred by those thick gloves I’d had to wear to avoid hurting him. Cleansing myself of the curse of Midas’s Reaper was one of the best decisions I’d ever made.

Fingertips running along the hypertrophic scars, I frowned imagining what’d caused them. Everywhere we went, whatever buildings or rooms we’d had to stay at, I’d made sure to prevent his access to anything sharp. A hurt alien was never any good; if it’d been by someone else’s hand, it was easy enough to turn their insides into their outsides, but if it was by his own… or, even worse, by mine…

His chest stopped moving, and my eyes widened in anxiety, frigid panic shooting through my veins. But just as I was sitting up to attempt to rouse him, he made a quiet sound and resumed respiration as if nothing had happened.

Just an apneic episode. I would need to ask the crew if that was common among his species, and find a way to treat it.

I settled back down into the bed next to him, eyes carefully observing his sleepy movements. He’d rolled onto his side, and because of the shape of his body, the lower half of his spine was at an angle with the upper body. I didn’t want his back to hurt in the morning, so I slipped my arm under his waist to re-align his spine, the cool of his body seeping through his shirt and mine.

The alien shifted slightly, a hand drifting down to rest on my arm as he curled into himself a bit more. He nuzzled his face into the pillow, mumbling incoherent, sleepy words.

Dieu, he was beautiful. I placed my other arm around him and pulled him closer to me, his body light and cold, small and fragile in my embrace. He then nuzzled into me, producing happy kepler noises upon doing so.

“Mon bien-aimé,” I murmured, taking his wrist in my fingers, running my thumb over its artery. Despite all the scars, his heartbeats were still strong underneath, a rhythm that seemed to sync to mine whenever he was relaxed.

I tried not to become overexcited, but even as an Earthling, I knew what they said about a kepler’s hearts.

If one synched to yours, they had an arrhythmia. If both synched to yours, that meant…

I exhaled with a smile, raising his wrist to my mouth and pressing a kiss right over the artery. How lucky I was, to have my favourite alien, my favourite person, favourite anything, choose me back.

I left little kisses down his forearm, wishing I could make the scars disappear– No, wishing I could make them never have happened in the first place.

But the scars were a reminder of what he'd gone though. They were a reminder of what he'd survived. For this fact, they were inherently beautiful. They were a part of him, thus they were perfect.

With a soft ding, the lights slowly turned on, dimly illuminating the room. He stirred, rubbing his eyes before slowly opening them, glancing sleepily around the room, then at me.

"Mm… good morning…" he mumbled, covering his face with an arm. "Already up? Hard time adjusting to Kepler day and night… stuff?"

After I remained silent, he raised his arm a bit, peeking at me around the hem of his sleeve. He didn’t say anything, though, simply observing me with eyes that slowly adjusted to the cabin’s ‘morning’ lights.

“Just… appreciating your beauty,” I finally answered. “I’m so, so lucky to have you.”

He laughed and covered his face, but I still saw the tips of his pointy ears turn blue.

“It’s true!” I exclaimed. “It’s true, and you know it’s true. Humans wish on comets, or shooting stars as they call them, but they should have been wishing on the spaceship that brought you to Earth. They should have been begging for you to fall into their arms as you fell into mine.”

“Oh, please,” he laughed as he rolled onto his stomach, propping himself up with his arms. “What if their wishes came true? Then what of you?”

I looked up at him from where I lay. “Then I’d hunt those bastards down and take you for myself, that’s what.”

He sighed, shaking his head, but I could see the fanged smile on his face.

“I know I don’t deserve you,” I started, “but–”

“You deserve the world,” he interjected. “You deserve Earth, Kepler, and–”

“You are my world.” I reached for his hand, lacing my fingers through his. “I don’t need a planet, or two, even the Solar System, I need you.”

He looked over at me, with eyes so inhuman but so him, beautiful little multicoloured supernovas that linked him back to his home planet. Galaxies I could get lost in, a lone man dancing through the stars; not lost, but home.

“I’m not going anywhere,” he whispered.

“I’ll follow you everywhere,” I whispered back. “It doesn’t matter where. All that matters is you.”

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page revision: 5, last edited: 06 Mar 2024 18:29
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