The captain bent down in front of him again. A small courtesy, matching their eye levels, and what soaked through it was a terrible depth of affection.
“Haa, hoo...”
“You’re doing well. Slower...”
“Hoo, hh...”
“That’s right. Like that.”
The golden eyes were full of worry. He’d brought Luca all the way to his quarters wanting to give him calm, and yet Luca’s suffering didn’t seem to have lessened at all.
He thought for a moment and finally chose to take a step back.
“Luca, today has been hard on you in a lot of ways, and taking on stress like this seems worse for your body. I’ll finish the story later.”
Still swallowing rough, hissing breaths, Luca caught hold of him.
“...Haa, you said you’d tell me. The reason you and I are both ‘Luka.’”
“I want to, but your color isn’t improving at all.”
He reached out and rubbed at eyes still wet with tears. A small body that struggled even with prosthetics was pleading with every part of itself that it had no room to take in a larger truth. Satisfying his curiosity could bring on something far worse.
“I don’t intend to hide it. I’ll tell you whenever you want. But right now I’d like you to take better care of your body. How about hearing it once you’re a little healthier?”
He was right. Frankly, it was too much to carry.
The captain, always so easy and unhurried about everything, was in fact a displaced person in the same position as him. And not merely that, the last survivor of an Earth destroyed over five hundred years ago. Which meant the man in front of him was a transcendent being more than five centuries old.
Then why had he chosen to sail leisurely through space instead of meeting Aegis with rage and dreaming of revenge? And what connection did he have to Luca, to look after him to this extent?
It was all things he couldn’t understand. Questions embroidered themselves densely across his mind, but as the captain said, settling his body came first.
“All right...”
At the docile answer the captain finally smiled. Gathering Luca gently up, he asked,
“Do you still think I brought you here to use you?”
“...”
“If I’d needed a machine person, I’d have chosen some other survivor with a better build than yours, skilled at combat, willing to stake his life fighting Aegis. Not you.”
“...”
“I want nothing from you. Just be healthy and happy at my side. Is that using you too?”
Luca stole glances at him. Even the heaving hyperventilation quieted inside those arms. Luca’s unconscious mind found the captain comfortable. That alone gave him a small satisfaction.
“Don’t push me away, Luca. When you do, it’s as hard as the world itself rejecting me.”
He pressed a courteous kiss to Luca’s forehead, then looked out at the universe beyond the glass that filled an entire wall.
“In about two months we’ll reach the tenth Terra-type planet. We can talk with new people there and get you a change of air. How does that sound?”
The tenth planet. A world where humans rooted in Earth just as he was actually lived struck him as curious and mysterious both. Frankly it was frightening too, but with the captain beside him it seemed he needn’t be scared in advance. Letting the strength go out of his body, Luca answered.
“...I’ll try to adapt to the prosthetics too.”
“No, don’t force yourself.”
“It’s because I want to walk on my own two feet on the new planet.”
“...”
“I’m sorry I couldn’t get through the surgery properly.”
“...”
“So make sure you answer me properly later. Until then I’ll trust you...”
Without a word the captain patted the strengthless body. Luca quietly evened out his breathing. There was a great deal he wanted to know and a great deal to do, but as the captain said, there was no need to strain to take it all in at once.
For now he wanted to work steadily through what he could actually do. A little slow, maybe, but solving them one by one would bring a better result.
Luca looked out at space for a long while from the captain’s arms. There had been times when the endless dark felt like an empty death. Not now. Just as the small mote shining in that darkness was in fact a very beautiful planet, he decided he wouldn’t let go of even the smallest hope.
Accepting the prosthetics.
That was the first step of that hope.
With all the tension gone out of him, Luca grew drowsy as a young animal. He nodded off, startled himself upright, and still couldn’t withstand the weight of eyelids going heavy again. Surely it was because the atmosphere of the captain’s quarters was nothing like the treatment room he’d spent the past month in.
This place was quiet and warm. No regular pulse of machine noise from medical equipment. In place of the cold, sharp smell of disinfectant, the fragrance of juniper made his heart feel cushioned.
Here, at least, he wasn’t a patient observed every moment. That fact alone let Luca relax and sink deep into the sofa.
Soft, even breaths.
Only after confirming that Luca’s breathing had steadied could the captain study his sleeping face closely. The face that had twisted with horror at the sight of the prosthetics, and with the betrayal of being made to wear such a thing, had gone easy. All that remained in the expression was that particular defenselessness.
And this is supposed to be an adult...
Was it simply a naturally youthful face, or had he lied about his age? Faced with a truth he still couldn’t determine, the captain let out a small laugh.
Wanting to see the face better, he even slid the tangled black hair aside.
It looked like a gentle, guiltless face that had never committed a wrong in its life. Clear away the shadow of exhaustion under the weight of his life and he’d be able to smile far more brightly.
If Luca had heard these private thoughts, he’d have shouted as though his whole body had broken out in gooseflesh.
“What kind of creepy nonsense is that? I’m not pure and I’m not good! I made my living taking people’s lives! And I was going to keep right on doing it as a special priest...!”
But even hearing that truth, the captain’s impression wouldn’t have changed. However hard Luca protested that he’d lived a vulgar life, this was a man who’d say, that’s the world being wrong, not you.
“...Luca.”
Lost in thought, the golden eyes watched him a long while. Unable to draw his hand back from that cheek, he kept vigil like a sentry watching over a fragile miracle.
Severed legs, a shattered arm, none of it mattered to him. All that mattered was that here, in the middle of a silent universe, a being with a clear soul was breathing peacefully.
He kissed Luca’s forehead, very briefly, like bestowing a blessing. Luca, who reacted so sharply to anything touching his body, didn’t wake for it.
Proof that he trusted the captain more than anyone. And proof, too, that with kisses laid on his forehead and the back of his hand so many times already, he’d grown used to it.
But the second blessing went to neither forehead nor hand. It went to his lips. The captain stalled as though hesitating, and then, having confirmed the even breathing and the calm heartbeat, he landed where he’d meant to all along.
A soft press of lips.
The small sound of contact scattered into the air at once. Even so, the captain’s lips stayed lightly against Luca’s and wouldn’t come away.
His lips were trembling. A joy he couldn’t conceal panted inside that tremor and scattered.
“Luca, the truth you want to hear is one thing. That you are the whole of my life.”
Something thick and clinging leaked out from inside the tenderness.
“If I could, I’d lock the door of these quarters and shut myself in this space with you forever. Whether you wear prosthetics or not, it makes no difference to me.”
If that small body couldn’t manage daily life on its own and came to depend entirely on him, that too would be an enormous happiness for him. But it wasn’t what Luca wanted, so he wanted the prosthetics attached by any means available.
Because Luca would only be happy walking on two legs and gripping a sword with two hands. For that happiness, he could bury this sticky feeling of his at a bottom no one would ever find.
“By the time you can understand my heart, you’ll know every secret you’ve been curious about too. So I won’t be impatient. Waiting is the thing I’m most confident about.”
The tender voice clung to his lips, slightly sharpened.
“I’ve waited more than a few decades. If you knew about this waiting, would you be frightened? The way you cried earlier, refusing me, pushing me away?”
He hoped fervently that he wouldn’t. Because if he ever had to watch Luca despise and reject him, he couldn’t guarantee how a self stripped of reason in that instant might run wild.
“Mmn...”
Luca’s eyelids slid up. Caught with their lips touching, the captain froze, holding even his breath. Luca, who he’d expected to shove him away violently, registered him with vacant eyes and simply fell back asleep.
Soft, even breaths.
At the steady breathing resuming, the captain’s lips quivered. Had he thought it was a dream? Or did it mean it was all right to kiss him?
He was on the verge of shaking, unable to get out the joy filling his whole body. That tremor drew tight low in his gut.
“Mm...”
Swallowing a small groan, the golden eyes showed no sign of leaving Luca. An enormous presence swelled beneath the neat uniform, and he let nothing of it show.
He was confident about enduring. He could endure, as always. As always.
