Tumbled Into Forever
She’s dead. But so is anybody else around her.
She’s also pretty sure not everyone around her has caught on to the fact that they’re all dead.
But Kei remembers how she died - they, she and Yattaran - because her death is tinged with regret. Regret to never have told Yattaran how much she loved him while they both were still alive. She, too, regretted to not have realized how much he loved her until the moment they died.
But there hardly was a more dedicated proof of love than Yattaran dragging his dying body these two yards across the shaking and bucking corridor to place his head in her lap while certain death headed their way.
The Arcadia had crashed spectacularly, they’d all been dead on impact. Well, maybe beside the Captains. Harlock and Yama. Yama who’s headwound should’ve been deadly and who had had taken a stroll on Mother Earth earlier, having a nice soak in Dark Matter.
She died a moment before Yattaran. She knew that for a fact, because he felt her stop breathing and the last thing she heard was his hoarsely whispered “See you soon, Kei.”
Then they woke up again.
It is hours later, off into a far, far corner of space, after a risky in-skip, that she and Yattaran find themselves alone, nestled away in her bunk - their bunk since then - hands trailing over unblemished skin where garish wounds should be.
“We should be dead?” Yattaran asks, confusion lacing his voice, face buried into the crook of her neck and Kei gently drags her nails through his short hair and says:
“We are. Just like the Captains and…” She stops because maybe they shouldn’t tell the others - yet.
“... Everyone else on the Arcadia.”
She blinks and nods as Yattaran finishes the sentence for her and holds him closer. They cling to each other and kiss, and pet, and she finally tells him that she loves him oh so much.
Yattaran tells her right back, tears in his eyes. “I love you and we have forever.”
They do. Have forever that is. Just like everyone else on the Arcadia, the ship who took a tumble in Mother Earth’s Dark Matter.
