A Cigarette

“He’s not there,” Rook’s voiced echoed out to Jenny. “I’m heading to the surface.”

Jenny strolled out of the greenhouse, crumpling up her gum wrapper and tossing it away with a flick of her thumb. Nodding into the darkness of the bunker, she watched as the pale blue glow Rook emitted moved swiftly to the bunker’s exit. It had been several hours since Jeremy had gone out for a smoke right before Kaamos’s surgery. Before Seeker had woken screaming…. Jeremy hated being stuck in a box under the ground. She couldn’t blame him and should not have been one bit surprised at him not being found. But to be gone so long….

Next came the living quarters. It was tempting to amuse herself by searching under couch cushions and in cupboards just to say that she had, but it had already been a long day, and her ability to make light of things was wearing precariously thin. She checked through all the rooms, then the bathroom, and was on her way back out when something on Rooks’ neatly made bed caught the corner of her eye. It was a single, neatly rolled cigarette.

She stared at it for several minutes, a strange, sick knot coiling in her gut. When she finally moved, it took more effort than she cared to admit to walk over to the bed. She picked the familiar object up, turned it over in her fingers, and with a conflicted frown that narrowed her already tired eyes, she tucked it behind one ear and headed out of the living quarters for the surface.

As Jenny crawled up out of the hatch the last echoes of an angered mordesh shout petered out over the sand, and it did not take much effort at all to find Rook. “Any luck?” she called out, dusting sand from her palms.

Rook viciously kicked a sandy stone with a growl, sending it skipping across the ground wildly before sinking into the sand with a soft thump. Colorful Mordescu curses rung in the air before she seemed able to collect herself. Turning to Jenny her shoulders sloped, frowning, and brows furrowed judging from how the glow from her facial apparatus and eyes were cast. “Not a trace…”

Jenny smoothly fixed an unreadable frown over her features as her blue eyes scoured the darkness in vain for… anything. Approaching Rook, she drew the cigarette out from behind her ear and offered it over. “This was settin’ on yer bed,” she said quietly.

Rook closed the distance between them. Spidery fingers plucked the rolled tobacco out of Jenny’s hand and a shuddered breath escaped her. “He left,” she realized out loud. “He left. Why would he leave?”

Jenny stared at the cigarette as if waiting for the paper to tell her something. Anything. Offering a lame shrug of her shoulders she shoved her free hand into her pockets to keep herself from fidgeting or lashing out…. Damn it all, it was too late for this. “Was hopin’ you’d know,” she offered quietly. “Any idea where ‘e’s gone?”

“I don’t have the faintest idea… I have no clue.” Rook shook her head. “I had no warning…”

Jenny licked her lips, and asked what she already knew the answer to.“… Do ya ever get a warnin’?”

“No. Never.”

Rook moved to set a hand on Jenny’s shoulder as she stood to her side. The height difference between them was staggering.“…I’m sorry, Jenny.”

She did not seem to register the hand on her shoulder for several seconds, but finally Jenny shrugged her free shoulder as if the apology was entirely unnecessary. “It’s fine,” she replied with a numb, half-hearted smirk. “He did wha’ ‘e though best fer ‘im…. An’ it’s one less potential casualty.” Jenny frowned at her words as soon as they left her lips. With the message that Dalaca was hunting them again in mind, the thought of Jeremy not being caught in it was the only twisted comfort she was afforded.

Suddenly Jenny was pulled into some sort of a side hug by the mordesh and a moment passed between them that did not need words. Had it not been for the unconscious Kaamos yards below them she had no doubt that the mordesh would have gone after him, and that she would have caught him.

“That doesn’t make it okay, even… even if he thought it was best.” Rook’s voice was level yet unnervingly acidic. “We’re in this together. We’re a family.”

Jenny smiled a little at hearing her own words, and after a few stubborn moments she leaned into the comfort of the mordesh’s side hug. “Will ‘e come back?” She instantly regretted asking. It sounded so… silly. Faithless. Weak. It made her sick. Not that she wouldn’t be just fine with him not there, of course. She had originally encouraged him to stay behind, after all.

There was an eerily long pause, even for Rook. In the dark of the Malgrave night, Jenny could see the mordesh’s eyes rove from one dune to the next. Across tents and abandoned things, like they had the answer all along. They offered nothing short of their sad presence.

“…Usually,” Rook murmured at last. “Jeremy has… a way of things, I guess. But this time…” She pulled Jenny in for a light squeeze against her hip, and Jenny guessed at what she was unable to say.

Jenny nodded her head once in understanding, but she lifted an arm around Rooks’ waist to return a light squeeze of her own. The young woman then dropped her arm, her jaw setting firmly. “Guess we’ll see. Next time I’ll snag ‘is lighter so ‘e won’ be able t’ ge’ very far.” With a flat look to the empty expanse of Malgrave around them, she blew a bubble of gum and popped it loudly in defiance. “You should get some sleep, Rook. I’ll sit up with Kaamos.”

Rook sighed quietly and began to move back to the hatch of the bunker. “Don’t… Don’t stay up here too long, okay?” she asked quietly before disappearing.

Jenny listened to the receding sound of Rooks boots against the ladder rungs, thinking about the lone cigarette the mordesh took with her till the dry desert air was void of everything but the ripple of torn awnings being tugged by the wind and the hiss of blowing sand. She liked the trees of Celestion, so vibrant and full of life. She liked the mountains and loftite towers of Algoroc even more, their heights humbling, and something great to reach out and strive to take hold of. But here… it was empty. There was nothing familiar but what she wore, and the dreaded feeling of being abandoned gnawed at the edge of her mind as almost everyone in the galaxy she cared about hid in the near bunker from a threat that was promised to find them again.

Almost everyone.

Sniffing, Jenny spat away her gum and turned to head back, only to suddenly stop and look down at the ground and the small scattering of cigarette butts beneath her boots. Pink lips pursing into a thin line she set her jaw, and kicked a wave of sand over to conceal them. She didn’t need cigarettes.