Aetheral Space

Ruth Blaine crawled.

It was a simple enough sequence. She reached out with one arm, seized a handful of gravel, and pushed herself forward with her elbow. Again, and again, and again. That was as quickly as she dared to go. Anything louder ran the risk of attracting Lily's attention.

Lily.

Ruth's head was a haze of emotions and intentions. How had Lily ended up here? Well, that was obvious enough. She'd been defeated back at Elysian Fields, and then she'd been dragged onto an operating table. The tracks Ruth had set the girl on had brought her here.

Yet another sickly thing to live inside her heart.

Ruth Blaine crawled… and stopped for a moment, as she looked at the figure before her in the mist of consciousness.

"What are you doing, Ruth?" asked Robin, looking down at her.

I need to get back. My friends need me.

"That never stopped you before. When I needed you, you weren't there either, were you? Why is it different now?"

A flash of mental light and horror -- illuminating, for the briefest of moments, a flayed corpse strapped to a pole.

"See? You haven't forgotten, have you? You're not allowed to forget that."

Ruth's hand twitched weakly, caught between movement and despair.

Back then… she breathed. I didn't know. I didn't know what was happening.

"You never know what's happening, do you?" Robin sneered. "You're naïve. You're a moron. You're a dolt. You're an idiot. Worthless."

Flash.

Robin, writhing, strapped to a pole.

"Worthless."

Flash.

Robin, screaming, strapped to a pole.

"Worthless."

Flash.

Robin, dying, strapped to a pole.

"WORTHLESS."

Flash.

A flayed corpse, strapped to a pole. It blocked the path before Ruth, where Robin had just been standing, looking down at her with sightless eyes. A fly crawled across her face. Of course. Robin was dead. How could she be standing before Ruth right now? Obviously, it could only have been her corpse.

"Everyone pays for your mistakes but you," Robin's voice rang out from the liquid world itself. "They die in pain, and you go on living without a care. Disgusting."

Ruth squeezed her eyes shut, but the corpse was still waiting for her behind her eyelids.

"You're a liar," it said. "You're a coward. Whenever things get tough, you go right back to the same place, don't you?"

Ruth opened her eyes -- and now, standing on the path before her, was herself. A version of herself with empty eyes and a vacuous grin, stretching all the way up its cheeks. It giggled.

"It's easy," it said, its voice disgusting. "I just don't need to worry about it. All I need to do is fight. This is what I'm for. This is what I'm for!"

Gritting her teeth, Ruth Blaine crawled. She crawled past the shadow of herself, even as it looked down at her with its wide mocking grin.

"This is what you're for," it hissed.

"Indeed," said a new voice, a new set of boots coming down to block our path. "It's your nature to retreat into violence. What else do you have? After everything else slips through your fingers, what remains to you but claw and blood?"

Ruth looked up, her pupils shrinking to furious dots. Standing above her now… was him. Zed Barridad. Robin's father. Robin's killer. The man she'd torn to shreds, looking down at her like she was an insect.

Barridad smiled thinly.

"Don't mistake my tone," he said. "I'm not judging you at all. How could I? It's splendid that you've discovered your function. It's even better that you've embraced it. To fight, to defeat, to kill. Yes -- that is you, and nothing else. You need only continue to fulfill that function."

His lips parted, revealing bloody teeth.

"That's your duty as a living thing."

Ruth swiped at his leg with a claw, and the image of the dead man scattered into dust.

"See?" Robin whispered into Ruth's ear, lying across her back. "It's all you know. It's all you can do. As soon as things get tough, you just whip out your claws and turn into a beast."

She leaned in closer, her breath cold as ice.

"But it still hurts, doesn't it?"

Get off me.

"Get off you?" Robin asked, her weight now absent. "I'm not on you. I'm not even here. You threw me away, remember? The same way you throw everyone away."

I don't do that. That's not me.

Ruth Blaine crawled. She reached a hand out, grabbed a fistful of gravel, and pulled herself --

-- no. It wasn't gravel she'd grabbed.

It was a corpse. The corpse of Ellis Half-Light. Another friend she'd lost. Another friend she'd thrown away. His pale face was frozen in an expression of pain, and her outstretched hand had hooked into his mangled jaw.

She hadn't even noticed. How could she not even notice? What kind of person was she?

"Ruth…" the corpse wheezed. "It hurts…"

Ruth pulled her hand away, as fast as she could, but the body just continued to twitch and gasp before her. Wincing, she tried to look away -- but Robin's fingers tightened into cruel talons in her hair, pulling her back and forcing her to watch.

"Look," Robin said calmly. "You did that. You did it a thousand more times. You did it to me, you did it to them… and you did it to Skipper."

Shut up!

When Ruth looked up, she could even see Skipper -- off in the distance, halfway into the horizon, a silhouette in the middle of a floating sun. All features erased. All but his outline already lost to time.

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But… even Ruth had to admit… part of what this malfunctioning brain of hers had to say rang true.

Robin. Ellis. Alice. Rex. Skipper. She'd promised herself she'd look out for them, and she'd failed to carry out the promise. It wasn't even as if life had blindsided her. It always ended the same way, after all.

When she stopped looking at people, they disappeared.

She hadn't been there when Robin had died, or Skipper, or Ellis, or Alice. Even with Rex, she'd only seen the last moment of his last moments -- just enough time for a twist of the knife, not a goodbye.

Again and again, it kept happening. She kept looking away from the people she'd promised to look out for. And she never learnt her lesson.

"There's no lesson to be learnt," Robin said. "You're just a liar. It's the same way you lied to Dragan. Remember?"

The hand loosened around Ruth's hair, and her head flopped down into the mud. When she was finally able to bring herself to look up again, the dream of a distant dusk illuminated her face.

I promise, a liar said. I'll show you that people can be good. I'll show you they're not how you think of them.

Were these even how the words had gone? They'd been dissolved and rearranged by memory and time. Again, and again, and again. Even so, the fact remained. Regardless of their wording…

…she had turned them into a lie.

"You didn't show him a thing, did you?" Robin sneered. "You gave him all those pretty words and patted yourself on the back for being such a nice person. Only…"

The world exploded into chaos.

The bloody streets of Taldan.

The choking smoke of the UniteRegent.

The charred battlefield of Hexkay.

The dark alleys of the Cradle.

The writhing horrors of Panacea.

The eager knives of the TrueMeet.

And Elysian Fields -- all of it.

The crucible that had constructed Dragan Hadrien. She could see him too, now. If she looked past it all, she could see him.

Sitting on a throne of flayed skin, wearing a crown of shining sapphires, his sockets burning with blue flames. He glared out of the darkness at her. This was what she'd made.

"This is all your fault, isn't it?" hissed Robin.

Ruth was silent, even as it started to rain.

Ruth was silent, even as the rain slammed into her.

Ruth was silent, even as the rain poured into her eyes and her mouth.

Robin looked down at her in disgust. "What?" she said. "Nothing else to say? Now you're just giving up like a coward again, aren't you?"

Ruth did have something else to say, though.

Who are you?

Robin raised an eyebrow. "You really are the worst. I'm Robin Zarribad. I used to be the most important person you had. Did you really forget about me after so little time?"

I haven't forgotten Robin, Ruth muttered. I couldn't ever forget Robin. But… you're not Robin.

The girl above her narrowed her eyes.

Even if this is all in my head… I couldn't even imagine Robin saying this stuff to me.

The mocking smile dropped from the girl's lips, and a gust of wind scattered the colour from her form. Her hair turned a vivid gold. Her eyes hardened into a frigid pink. The contours of her face shifted and realigned.

Ruth gritted her teeth as she looked up at the woman who'd taken so much from her.

'Rae Ruditia'.

The Shepherdess.

"Oh, Ruth," she sighed, her expression full of condescending pity. "Look what's happened to you."

You mean what you did to me?

"That's right," she smiled. "I did this to you. And what did I get in return? What happened to that vengeance you were so excited about?"

"You gave up so easily," Ellis rasped, his entrails hanging from the sky. "Just like you give up on everything else."

"You didn't really care about us," Alice gasped, her bones protruding from the earth. "If you did, you wouldn't have half-assed it like that. You'd have stopped at nothing to make her pay."

Rex just stared at her through the fog, his mask silent and expressionless.

"It looks like all your friends hate you, Ruth," the Shepherdess observed smugly, her hands on her hips. "But honestly… I can't blame them. You swore revenge on me -- and then, as soon as you ran into the first obstacle, you gave up on it. You went gallivanting off with your new Nebula friends… oh, but you let one of them die too, didn't you?"

She grinned with bloody teeth.

"What a waste you are," she said. "Letting your enemy go like that… how disgraceful."

Wind whistled, rain fell… and Ruth chuckled.

The Shepherdess' smile vanished. "What do you think you're laughing at?"

At you, Ruth laughed, her chest shaking. Listen to yourself. You don't get it at all, do you?

"Don't get what?"

You're not my enemy.

It was the Shepherdess' turn to laugh. "Ha! Don't try to act tough. I know you hate me. I know you want me dead. It's just that you don't have what it takes to make it happen. Don't try and pretend otherwise, you coward."

Ruth looked up at her -- and now she was the one with the mocking grin on her face. The Shepherdess' eye twitched in anger.

"What?!" she barked. "What's that look supposed to mean?!"

You really… don't get anything at all. Yeah, I hate you. Yeah, I want you dead more than anything else. But that doesn't mean you're my enemy.

She ran her tongue over her teeth.

You're not important enough to be my enemy.

Ruth Blaine crawled.

She reached out with one arm, seized a handful of gravel, and pushed herself forward with her elbow. She did it again, and again, and again. She dragged herself on… and past the Shepherdess.

"Don't try to sound tough," the Shepherdess said, glaring down at her as she passed. "You can say whatever you want, but I know it's just lip-service, just like what you said back on Caelus Breck."

Ruth ignored her, and kept crawling.

"You really think you can just keep going?!" the Shepherdess screamed after her. "You've lost everyone! You'll keep losing everyone!"

Yeah, she said. I've lost people. It seems all I do is lose people. The second I look away from them, the people I love disappear. I'm sad now… but I was happy before, and I know I'll be happy again.

"Ruth! Get back here!"

There's no need to make it more complicated than that.

"Coward! Moron! Traitor!"

Ruth stopped for a moment, glancing over her shoulder at the Shepherdess' distant figure. The shadow grinned giddily.

"That's right," the Shepherdess breathed. "You've even betrayed Skipper now. You're meant to change the shape of this world, to tear down what I've built -- and all you care about is your own happiness. How ridiculous. How juvenile! How disgusting!"

Ruth gently closed her eyes. You're probably right there. The thing is…

The Shepherdess blinked. "Eh?"

…I really don't care about the shape of this world.

All these big dreams other people have… Skipper, Dragan, or that Muzazi guy… I don't have those. I go along with the people I care about, whatever they're doing, because I want them to be safe… but I don't feel the same way about that stuff as them. Maybe that makes me a scumbag or whatever…

She looked back, past the Shepherdess, at the line of lost friends that dotted the horizons. They were gone. Yeah, they were gone… but she could still see them.

…even if it does, though, I don't think I really care about that either. Changing the shape of this world… yeah, it probably needs to happen… but I don't have big enough hands for that.

Ruth Blaine crawled.

I don't have hands big enough to hold a galaxy…

Ruth Blaine crawled.

…or even a single planet…

Ruth Blaine crawled!

…but even if all I can hold onto is gravel…

RUTH BLAINE CRAWLED!

…I'll keep crawling 'till the end.

Ruth Blaine crawled… and her hand reached the mouth of a tunnel. In that instant of success, the fog of hallucination cleared, and the world was the world again. The ruined city around her was just a ruined city, the sky was just the sky, and the darkness of the tunnel before her… was nothing but the dark.

Ruth Blaine crawled, and passed right through.