Editing Put Paid, Packed Away

<span style="color:#800000">'''No one says goodbye overnight to someone they've loved for years and while I didn't think the table was the proper place to bring them up, some details needed addressing. So I brought them here.--Maer'''</span> <br><br><br> 

'''Monday 21 Jun 2523'''<br>
'''Cottage on the coast, Angel'''<br>
'''Kalidasa (Xuan Wu) system'''<br>
'''Sometime before dawn'''<br><br>


Joshua and I had spent the hours before midnight getting acquainted with our bed, almost double on a side than either of us was tall, and the murmur of the surf had finally lulled us to sleep. The sound of it met me as I woke with a start and for a second, I couldn't remember where I was. Joshua slept beside me, unconsciously sprawling with abandon thanks to the size of the bed, and it was easy to slip away without jostling him awake. Our hosts had thought of everything.  I pulled on the bathrobe they'd provided and padded barefoot off the platform for the veranda. Zephyr was nearly full and hung low on the horizon, a fingertip above the ocean, and by her aqua glow I was able to find my way easily. <br><br>

The sky was strewn with stars, too many to take in at once. Their hard diamond glitter reminded me of another night filled with stars and the man who stood under them with me. Mike was gone. As many close calls and scrapes as he'd managed to overcome through the years, Mike could not have survived after Joshua let him go. I knew of no way it could be done, could not imagine a solution without descending into madness, devising one impossible scenario after another. Something I was aware I could do and I resisted it. I had people who loved me and a life to live. Both required I remain sane. <br><br>

Mike had people who loved him and despite the conditions of his exile on Miranda, he too had a life to live. I thought back on what he'd said, of how Valerie's cure had changed him once exposed to the Pax. How it had made him smarter, stronger, faster. Had it driven him mad? Or had he made the best of a hideous situation and found a way to make it work for him and what he believed in? I will never know what he truly intended to do with me had Joshua lost. Arden's fate, I had pretty much mapped out—he'd be a captive doctor making more copies of Mike, replicating the process by which he'd been changed. <br><br>

But what purpose would I serve on that ship? Engineer? First Mate? Lover? Bed Toy? Snack? All those positions held mortal risk, some more than others. And if Mike had actually gone through with his threat and changed me into something like him, would there have been anything of my old self left? And if so, would I have wanted to live with the loss? Would I even have cared? Or would I, like Mike, have come to grips with the change and tried to make it work for me, changed consciousness and all? Was that state so  … elevated, evolved, exalted … that Mike would rather risk the death of my personhood to give me a chance at it? Had his love become so twisted and bitter? Or was he, like Shelley's monster, a desperately lonely creation in need of a companion to make his existence bearable? Had I turned my back on him yet again, when he laid everything he had and was and could be at my feet, to no avail?<br><br>

''Stop. You're doing it again. Driving yourself crazy to no purpose''. <br><br>

All the what-ifs in the Universe would not bring him back. I would never get to say goodbye or explain the choices I made that left him outside the life he'd hoped to build with me. He wasn't blameless, but neither was I. And no matter his true intentions at the end, the fact remained that I had already given myself to another against his reasonable expectations otherwise, and he had fought to get me back. And lying on the marriage bed behind me was the man who had won. <br><br>

''So pull your head out of your ass and turn that around. How do you think Joshua feels? He's had to deal with Mike always looking over his shoulder. Dogging his footsteps. Always being better. Always being '''first'''. Knowing he'll never have all of me but only whatever Mike's left behind.'' <br><br>

Furthermore, Joshua had never killed before. Killing is a life changer. It divides your existence into a Before and an After. For all the years I'd known him, Joshua held off stepping into that territory by any means he could. And now there would be no washing the blood off is hands. How would he live with that? And how would he live knowing he did it, in part, for me?<br><br>

So ran my thoughts and they were the reason I left our bed. Joshua made a point of never fully Reading me without explicit invitation, even my dreams when we slept, but I knew that strong emotion had a way of making it past his defenses. Our bed wasn't the place for this sort of thing. Neither was our marriage. If I was to go forward with it, I had to make room for it. With Mike gone, he could no longer occupy the same territory in my heart and head he once had, not when I had Joshua waiting to take his place as was his right, earned by love and contest. <br><br>

I thought back to the morning on Sihnon when I'd reconciled myself to losing Nikolai. It had hurt but it had been a sharp sudden loss, an unexpected kick to the head. Losing Mike had been an ongoing process that had begun years ago, but not one bit less painful. Shifting the love and weight of years would not be easy and like Rome, not dismantled in a day. Like a widow sorting through her departed's belongings, I ran through my memories of Mike and as the night drift inexorably toward sunrise, carefully began to pack them away.<br><br>


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