Star Side

Chapter 12

Stellar date (Earth Time): 01-26-2914

Whatever had attacked Joshua had poison.

Not soon after Naomi discovered that when looking into why his wounds refused to close, Joshua woke up, delirious with fever.

"Who's zat?" he'd asked looking straight into my face. I'd come by to bring Naomi some food.

I raised an eyebrow. "Jolene."

"Nah, Jo's a cute little lady. You're def'nit a man."

...Yeah. I'd gotten that before.

"A man with boobs?" I said dryly.

His eyes looked down to my chest, then frowned. I did not have small breasts. It was the only comfort God gave when he made me.

"Huh..."

Then Naomi was on him, slapping his cheeks to get his awareness. She shot him with more fever reducing drugs, then slapped him some more until clarity came to his eyes. But if I had been expecting an apology, I didn't get one. Josh stepped from delirium into hysterics.

"A demon! It was full blown demon! Red skin, horns, teeth, claws—it came at me from the pits of hell! It dragged me down to brimstone and lava!"

"It was just an alien," Naomi insisted. "It could look like a demon—"

"No, it looked right at me! Right into my mind! Knew all my sins!"

"Do Jews even believe in demons?" I asked.

Naomi gave me a glare for that, so I figured I wasn't invited anymore and left Naomi to get what details she could out of the now crying Joshua.

If I had known that would be the last time I'd see him alive, I would have chosen my words better.

It was Levi who found me up in the observatory, painting the poles of plannet Carrot-Puke, who gave me the word.

"Josh's dead."

I thought I had heard wrong. I'd just been talking to him an hour ago. I had fully expected to spend lunch with him in a few minutes.

"The poison had been in his system long before he got back," Levi continued, dark eyes shadowed in my dim-lit observatory and pale face glowing like one of the moons of the planet.

"But...it was just...she'd just applied coagulation to his wounds, we had plenty of blood in stock—"

"He didn't bleed out. The tissues of his muscles were forced slack. That includes his heart."

"Don't we have machines for that?"

"Jo," said Levi firmly. "Don't you think Naomi did everything she could?"

But it just wouldn't process in my head. I couldn't see how Joshua could be dead. It felt so strange.

"I...I was just talking to him."

Levi must have understood something of my shock, for he sat down next to me and folded his legs under him, which he only did when he intended to stay somewhere for a while. Otherwise, he was a man-spreader, through and through.

We didn't say nothing for a long while. I sat there with my paintbrush still full of moss green and my paints drying on my plate. Outside the dome, Vega 12, the real name of the planet we called Carrot-Puke, glowed ever serenely. One of its moons, an orange rust-bucket of a rock, peeked out from its other side where night was ending.

"Naomi...?" I finally happened to ask.

"She's still trying."

"Ah..."

I glanced over at Levi to see his expression impassive. His hands hung still off his knees. There was a dry coldness to the way he looked up at the planet. Something in the way he breathed and didn't so much as glance at me told me that something was wrong.

"Just in case," I said. "It's not your fault."

One of his hands jumped and his black eyes flickered to me. Then back to the planet.

"They're here because of me."

It was a tone so flat, so devoid of emotion, it could have come from a robot.

"They chose that," I said. "And we all tried to stop him from going on that planet."

"Naomi's going to remember that he's here because of me." He was getting quieter.

"There's no one to blame but Josh for this, and no one could have accounted for something that dangerous. There was nothing we could do."

"But he was here..." it was almost a whisper. A mechanical whisper.

Levi was a very none-touchy person. The most he ever did was the one-armed hug I'd seen him give Naomi on the bridge. 

I tried to respect this when I reached over and tugged at his sleeve. He always wore these long-sleeved, cotton shirts that never got brighter in color than a dark red. They had these useless white buttons near the top for show. I'd already ordered an obnoxious orange t-shirt for him with 'boots are for suckers' printed on it. But packages took about six months on average to reach us out here, which was already incredibly fast. It was only when transporting anything alive that the full twenty years was needed.

"It's not your fault." I said. "And if it is, I'm going to share some too. I should have punched him out instead of letting him talk me into it. You know, ugly brute Jo style."

Levi gave a hoarse huff. "You're not an ugly brute."

"Not really the time for pep talks, honey." Since he hadn't shaken off my fingers from his sleeve, I slowly put my fingers over his forearm. "Do you think we should go to her or give her more time?"

"More time...just a bit." His glanced at my forgotten easel. "You're paints are drying up."

"I always have more."

"Why do you bother with this old fashion stuff?"

"I'm a textile kind of person." I removed my hand from his forearm, even though he hadn't made any sign of disliking my touch. "I like to feel what I'm doing."

His eyes weren't on my paints anymore, though, but to where I had touched him on his arm.

"I can get that," he said.

Even so, I only sat there for another minute or so before the pressure building behind my chest urged me into motion. I put away my paints in their capsules, slid the canvas away into the locker meant for actual astronomers, and used the restroom water to clean my paintbrush and plate.

I just finished up and was watching my hands when the door opened. I caught sight of Levi, head bowed, eyes hidden behind the fringe of his pepper and salt hair, before I felt the startling heat of his body pressed up against my back. It was the most physical contact I'd felt from someone in literal years, not including my twenty-year sleep in transit, and it set both hot alarm spikes across my skin as well as opened something needy and whiney.

He hung his head over one of my shoulders. Short gristle from his jaw scratched my neck.

The moment I turned off the water, he took back his head and left.