The Navigator

31. Evaporating into Nothing

Author's Note: Sorry this was late!

Song Credit: The War, SYML

This Chapter contains some mature language and sexual themes. This story is rated mature so discretion is advised.

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Jax had been in an empty room before, his own lungs the only source of turbulating air, body the soul progenitor of movement and heat. A space that at one point contained all sorts of joys and passions but now was just his place of occupancy and rest. Last night, when he returned from only a minute's worth of personal grooming he learned just how empty an vacated room could make a person feel.

He had once had his EVA suit punctured while on a walk for repairs, this felt much like that. A sucking into vacuum, bits of himself tossed into the void while a hopeless compensation of pumping nitrogen and oxygen tried to save him. The only difference was this time his own blood didn't appear as globes of oxidized life inside his suit, beading against his visor and obscuring his vision. He couldn't hear the sputtering sound of the liter or so he lost through the tear, his ear drums had burst instantly, but he knew he was evaporating into nothing. That was what felt most similar, that the precious oxygen carrier was not only taken from him, but made into nothing so quickly as to never have existed in the first place. A shell, a husk of what was once a man all that was left of him.

Back then he had moved quickly, patching the suit while moving rapidly towards the airlock, saving himself. This time he sat on the tousled bed that so recently cradled his heart and bled out, letting all of him be sucked up into the freezing negative pressure. It was too much, this abandonment. He had asked, no begged but still she was gone.

She had a lot going on, he reasoned, she had just left her boyfriend, just told the bastard off and been called horrible names. No wonder she wanted to be alone, it made sense. He understood. It was fine.

His hands began to shake with the 'fineness', a physical manifestation of his extreme level of 'not fine'. Feeling only pressure, he changed clothes again-no longer exhausted and retreated to the only predictable outlet he had. Where he had stayed, focus tight on his form, performing the same action again and again and again and again...

He had barely noticed Dade enter in the early hours of the morning, starting his run on his usual treadmill, saying nothing. When he finally did speak, Jax couldn't be bothered to answer, ignoring the lewd joke that implied the man knew what other exercise Jax had participated in last night. Again and again and again and....

His next visitor had been who he was waiting for, if he was willing to admit it or not. She flitted in on a gust of wind, carried to him by some kind of preternatural force. It had been impossible to look at her after that first glance, but equally impossible to retain the precarious balance he had reached in the night. Her sympathy, her apology, had sent him over the edge he had been fighting. Holding to slippery rock with all his might as the unfeeling water rushed on either side of him, pushing and pushing without mercy off the side of the waterfall. Addy an unpredictable bit of flotsam that broke his grip and sent him sailing into free air without hope to recover.

Then he had landed, the water deep and free of crushing rock, the air knocked from his lungs but unbroken, able to swim with powerful sweeping strokes to the surface and reach for her as she reached for him. The gasp for air never more necessary or transcendent, giving him back his life. No longer on the edge, Addy his destroyer and his savior.

So now he sat alone again, back to the mirrored wall waiting for her return. She had helped him sit, his fatigue becoming overwhelming with the advent of forgiveness and the hope for resolution. She had started with his hands, going to them instantly and he didn't redirect her. He didn't want her to see the damage, but at the same time he wanted to share with her all of him. Even the broken, split and blistered parts she had never seen before.