The air is crisp, harsh, and the night is singing with a whispering breeze through the trees.
Era stands tall, above it. Her eyes focus on bare branches lifting towards the sky; nature’s hands reaching out to life, trying desperately to call down something of the sun even as it arms atrophy and grow dark.
It is a fitting song then: the whistle of winter’s turn.
The closest parallel to the fight within all living things that one day would see snow; to battle against inevitable death as long as the warmth of summer provided a strong enough shield against the bitter light of winter.
And what organic creature wouldn’t bare their teeth at death? What breathing creature wouldn’t see a chance at survival and push forward, hoping they can make their blood pump fast enough to kill the chill before it ever begins?
Era knows.
She’s seen creatures bowed on a planet’s ground, their eyes closed with as near to peace as they’ll ever feel.
Seen insects swarm for one toiling daybreak before falling from the sky with the sun. Gone long enough for people to forget before they rise once again.
Plants sometimes die to survive.
And people…
Era breaths in with biting wind. She exhales with the battle.
People die for stupid reasons, she thinks. People will die for brothers and bread and innovation. For what is already free. Land and peace and love. Love, Era thinks, is the most stupid thing to die for. As if one could buy affection with its antithesis.
The cement walkways are scuffed below her. The breeze brushes against cloth.
Love, Era thinks, is a weapon in the hands of the dead, and a noose in the hands of the living.
Daniel steps to the center of the garden, peering up at the immense tree. It lost the last of its leaves only a few days before.
His hair turns to silver in the moon’s light, but his eyes darken. White lines cut across his face: small near his mouth, his eyes, but a larger one behind his left ear that disappears into his brown shirt.
He looks peaceful.
He looks kind.
Everything around her freezes for one second, before the sparks bleeds from the air.
A child’s mistake and for a moment she is embarrassed at her control.
Daniel places a hand on the tree as his lips stretch around a smile.
Era closes her eyes and lets the sting settle into her lungs instead. It’s not her control she is vexed at, she knows. (The voice whispering in her head is not deep, but smooth and masculine, and curled around the edges with something dangerous). There was a time where Ingus lost control.
No. Daniel grins, and Era is not flustered, but ashamed.
A silly thing to live for, Ingus once told her.
What else is there?, Era responded.
She opens her eyes and takes in the boy in front of her.
Tall and broad-shouldered. Strength to match his scars. Gentleness to soften his cunning.
His booming laughter, to drown out his fear.
There is a ruler, wrapped around his shoulders, yet all Era can see is the boy.
The boy running before her as they walked, on outposts and stations and to home.
The boy who grabbed for every gear he passed, if only to hand them to her.
The boy, cheering as he fixed the damaged pieces of his own tech.
The boy with two bright eyes who cried before she did.
The boy who screamed himself awake at night and only wanted to be held.
The boy broken into a weapon.
They boy forced to become sovereign.
The boy Era forged.
Ingus would have liked him. Before she took him.
Ingus would have liked the boy who might one day choose to be a scientist.
Headstrong and impassioned, they would have been two mirages just visible in opposite directions.
Still, Daniel is a good sovereign, despite it all. Spite was a good motivator.
Era stares at his hands held loose at his sides.
So is pain.
One morning, while the boy was still young enough to confuse her name with another’s, she took him to an outpost they surveyed for two days. Together they walked disguised paths. Gathered supplies from uncorrupted markets. Feasted on meals side by side with their true brethren. When the sun set on the second day, she sat him down in a space lift and held one of his hands in her own.
Fate lines are not written in the palm of your hand, she traced. They are there, in the lines of your knuckles. In the weight of your fist. You write them, every time your fingers take shapes. She brushed his palm and he squealed as static shocks leapt up his arm and tickled at his nose. Be careful, then, that you do not weld a destiny only your hands can bear. You are more than what you build. Only your heart understands that.
The boy had stared at the fingers. His eyes shone. He giggled. He looked at her and begged her to turn static into flames, as she had done before.
She hadn’t been afraid that evening.
In her mind the boy was happy. The boy was learning. The boy was becoming something powerful.
Era never worried whether he was good.
If she she was doing enough.
Who he would become.
If he felt safe.
She glances down.
Daniel paces around the tree.
Footsteps steady. His breathing is repetitive and soothing. His shoulders loose.
He is a long way from the small boy who laughed at static shocks.
Beyond his physical power, at times his eyes flicker like the promise of lightning. Held fast, balanced calm in the lines of his face all while the tempest quietly gathered, indifferent and heedless of its time. Lightning strikes when the air is charged just right and this amplified tempest doesn’t care when that moment will come.
One strike. That’s all lightning fights for.
If she asked him what his fate lines read, would he know an answer?
She cannot see his hands, but she knows his cracked knuckles. Fingers bent from popping and breaking. Silver lines along reddened knuckles. Oil, caked under his nails though a sovereign was not meant for such work. Callouses tracing along the inside, following a grip that tells a story of blood.
How many of those shapes his hand engraved were because of her?
Which part of the storm did Era call down?
She cannot hide her part.
Even if all who knew her name were returned to dust tomorrow, her blight sinks deep far beyond these garden walls.
An entire empire nearly burned because of the boy.
A kingdom falling, because of a cyborg.
Hope nearly drowned and one man’s sacrifice the wretched start.
Era knows the choices she made.
The circuits remains in her bones as a testimony. A living reminder buried in her flesh of everything she pushed for. And there are sweet memories entwined with her veins, rotting and overwhelmed by promises of greatness and truth.
Despite the defects of her heart, she opened her arms to a boy and pushed a drill into his hand. Dawn filled with books and papers. Long mornings of welding and circuitry. Afternoons and evenings filled with metal in all its forms. Twilight, one harbor of rest to quietly let the day’s work settle.
Night, for the dreams she concealed soothing.
Fear pushes animals to run when they have no chance at victory. The boy grew from a child to barely contained fury.
The faint recollection of peace was enough to make her gladly swallow loyalty built on fractures.
She made a weapon of a boy.
All Titus did was ask.
And maybe she is the source for all his pain.
From her saturated fury thousands of rivers were worn away. Dragged along their path are all the gears and tools she never worked. Instead canyons corroded into his heart and will never be filled or fixed or healed.
Era cannot help but remember.
Above anything, on nights like this where the air is sharp and the stars bright and the trees are calling on the wind, all she wants to do is scream and she remembers.
One morning, on the day of his appointment, she looked into the eyes of the council and judgment and condemnation stared back at her. Era knew she raised a sovereign, but she first raised a weapon.
She tried to leave.
Knew there were safe hands enshrouding his shoulders. Better memories to imprint on his palms.
Until…she heard shouting.
The hanger doors were flung open and the box of supplies ripped from her hands and she stared at the boy she created.
Daniel seethed.
She knows, in defiance of the way he keeps his posture still and tilts his head back, he will always be a mass of rage.
His hands suddenly clenched as his eyes burrowed into her with anger. But there is confusion and betrayal too.
She tried to fight past it, and instead of excuses for leaving she gave a reason for not staying.
She pointed a hand at his heart then clenched her fist. When her eyes moved to the hangar door as she let go she thought he might understand.
Except then he was the tempest. He stepped forward so her eyes were forced to meet his as he took a ragged breath and snarled, heat and anger and something broken as he whispered, “You are my mother” and Era…
Collapsed inward and shattered into fragmented sparks of light as four words broke her in a way she tried to forget she could be broken.
He holds love and admiration and when he led her back to the Scientific Council, his eyes were flickering with a challenge no one knew how to meet.
Era was given a seat at his table and a room in his house and a place in his life.
Era stares up into the night and remembers.
And grieves.
And accepts.
She thinks she is the root of his pain.
And maybe he knows it too.
But he still called her mother, knowing the truth she lied for so long, knowing her role in his destruction, knowing how little right she had to claim him, that he wasn’t ever hers; he called her Mother.
She might be the source of his pain, but she is also the forger of peace, and love and on some nights, hope.
Maybe for that, she deserves the role he gives her.
And then she sees a man smiling by himself in the moonlight and knows:
It’s not her right to decide.
It’s his.
