'So far away,' he pondered.
'Eight point six light years.'
'Eight point…wow. So what I’m looking at right now is you almost nine years ago. What were you doing nine years ago? Were you still on Sirius or were you here already?'
Nina thought before answering, 'I was still on Sirius, fighting in the Unification War. I think it was about this time eight years ago or so that I learned to fly. Oh yeah,' she smiled. 'I remember because we all got in this big bar fight. I mean, we were young and stupid then.'
He looked over at her. The Major’s eyes remained glued to that flicker of light in the sky.
'I should have never come to this place. But we…'
She stopped.
'Go on. But you what?'
'But we were convinced you were the man who would build an Empire on this planet.'
Nina stopped talking and walked inside with her shoulders slumped, perhaps thinking she spoiled an otherwise pleasant moment. Trevor followed and they sat around the Chem Lantern.
After sitting in silence for a minute, he said, 'I remember saying to my Nina that maybe the invasion was about how dangerous mankind is, maybe some power in the universe needed to wipe us out. Well maybe I was right after all, only it isn’t just humanity that’s a threat. It’s the Chaktaw and the Hivvans and the Geryons and the rest.'
'Oh.'
He tried to ponder that thought for a moment while the whisper of outside wind slipped into the main chamber. The Chem Lanterns kept things warm, but the sound of that wind made him feel chilled, if only in his mind.
'You miss your Nina very much. I can see that. You carry her with you, like a wound.'
Could he deny it? Maybe the Old Man had been right, that losing Nina would make him all the more potent a fighter, one fueled by rage for what he had lost.
Slaughter them all, Trev. Maybe if you kill enough of em' you'll feel better.
He answered, 'It's the way it happened. If she had died…if we had just broken up or something, I would have moved on a long time ago. They stole her memories, do you understand? She didn't stop loving me; she just forgot that she ever had. Do you know what kind of torture that is, knowing you're the only one who remembers?'
'Do you ever talk to her? See her around?'
'Don't you get it? She doesn’t exist any more. All the things that made her who she was are gone; she’s gone, turned back to a person who never even knew me.'
The Major countered, 'She still has her body and her mind. There are parts of that person inside her, right?'
He answered tentatively, 'Yeah. I guess.'
She seemed waiting for him to say more, but he chose to avoid the discussion. Since coming to this world he had had his mind and emotions twisted more than enough, particularly in regards to who was who and differences running more than skin deep.
Nina said, 'I want to give you a gift.'
Her sentence hung in the air for a moment with no noise to intrude, the wind had paused momentarily and the Chem Lantern gave off only heat and light, no sound.
'You what?'
Nina stood and walked around the light. Her feet shuffled on the dusty cavern floor as she moved in front of him and knelt as he sat with his legs crossed.
'I want to give you a gift,' she repeated.
'A…A gift?'
Nina stripped off the top of her battle suit revealing a white undershirt.
'Close your eyes,' she instructed.
'Nina, I don’t know what you’re-'
She placed a gentle finger on his lips and, in an almost motherly tone, calmed, 'Shhhh.'
He looked at her blue eyes and saw real warmth there. Real, honest human warmth. Compassion, even.
Trevor closed his eyes.
She turned and sat in his lap, leaning against his chest and pulling his arms around her in a hug. With his eyes closed, he felt her heart beat, he felt the gentle in and out of her lungs, and found that her scent was, in fact, identical to that Nina from another world.
She whispered, 'When you open your eyes, speak to the woman you loved. She’s here, in me. I have all the things that made her who she was, they’re just arranged differently. Take your memories and make me into her.'
Trevor felt a shiver but he could not discern if the tremble came from him, or her. Nonetheless, he kept his eyes shut tight.
'Tell her…tell her everything you never had the chance to say. Tell her what you would tell her…if only…if only you had one more moment with her. Just one moment.'
The Major fell silent. She would say no more for a long while.
Trevor sat perfectly still, unsure how to react. His first instinct was to reject the very notion, the idea that- but yes, she was in there, wasn't she? Since coming to this planet, he had hoped this twin could be the real thing. In so many ways, they were different, but if there was any place in the universe-in all the universes-where he might possibly reach the soul of Nina Forest, it was here; it was now.
A touch of fear stroked across his spine as he unclenched his eyes, seeing first the soft, liquid glow from the lantern.
She did not look at him, her eyes remained open but staring at the floor. To face him would spoil the illusion. She could be his Nina, but only at a sideways glance.
He rested his chin on her shoulder and soaked in the moment.
Armageddon had robbed him of many things, including a sense of wonder. When he first came here the very concept of a parallel universe failed to shock him. Years of facing all manner of nightmares eroded his ability to be astonished or surprised by whatever new turn his path took. Fighting for survival allowed no time to marvel at the greater picture.
For this one moment, his mind opened again to the possibilities. The possibilities that this woman sitting quietly in his lap was more than a physical duplicate of Nina Forest, that she was a spiritual one as well.
His heart beat…a little faster. His arms hugged her tighter. He tilted his head to better gaze upon her profile, bathed in the warmth of the lantern's light. She became a still-life portrait of Nina Forest, a snap shot of the one person who had held his heart. Except this portrait was more than a mere image. He felt the heat of her body, the rhythm of her pulse.
And for a moment…just one moment…he could speak to her again.
'Nina…' he found his lips suddenly dry and licked them. He felt a lump in his throat. Such powerful magic would not last. Yet after so long, what would he say?
'I miss you.'
He stopped, considered, and as his breath grew short, he told her, 'You…you gave me balance. Since you're gone, I've got nothing but the fight. I've become…' he paused in part to find the right words, in part because he felt embarrassed at the answer.
The Nina Forest he knew back home was a warrior, she understood the focus and brutality of soldiering, but even she would wince at the darkness into which he had descended since crossing the universal divide.
'I'm drowning in this war. It's consumed every part of me. You asked me to remember. You told me…I must remember. To make it all mean something. To me, now, memories mean only misery. I'm angry all the time, and now I'm afraid of who I really am.'
The wind whistled outside the cave in a forlorn cry from a breeze that was all alone in a dark night. Her hands- Nina’s hands-stroked the goose bumps on his arm. Each caress of her finger tips felt like a shock of electricity.
'I was supposed to be the hero, but I don't feel like a hero at all.'
The illusion broke as he closed his eyes and bowed from the weight of the emotion within, led by guilt with a
