( they stand there, in silence, passing back a cigarette until the stick burns to crumbling ash. felix says nothing for a long time. he can't remember the last time he did this — just existing in stillness, without words or motion. ortez, probably. ortez is his last everything.

has he always been this fucking tired? never noticed it because he never stops? he's tired, he thinks.

he passes the remainder of the cigarette to ephemera, allowing him the last drag, then stares down at his hand again. still shaking, but less. he loosely curls his fingers into his palm and hooks out his pinky, tilted toward a yellow stream of nearby lamplight. his mother's name, inked in neat letters on the side of his finger, a little faded with time. tatiana. )

My ma. Tat'yana. Got it right after I enlisted. When I showed her on a vidcall, she cried and didn't talk to me for six months.

( soft, even with all her fanatical delusions, even at her absolute worst, when she frightened felix more than anything. she cried when he enlisted, too, and clung to him the day he shipped out, begged anyone who would listen not to take him away. too young, she said, teary-eyed, lashes clumped in mascara. still a baby. her little rabbit. her imperfect boy. damned to hell, but he was hers. )

I was seventeen. Thirty-two now. Haven't seen her in a decade.

( not directly, anyway. he's seen her from afar, across crowded streets, in the market as she picked out apples and sweet cherries, through the window of her small two bedroom cottage. she lives in the country now, far away from any ocean. sometimes she looks happy. )