Night City Aliens: The Wandering Planet

Ch 7: Humility is Hard

They did it. The Valentinos won. It would take months or even years for Maelstrom to recover after taking such massive losses. But these kinds of victories came at a cost. The Valentinos suffered their own share of casualties.

Diego didn't survive. Isabel nearly broke down when she spotted his corpse. The only reason she was keeping herself together was because she needed to keep an eye on David. The two men were like brothers, and someone had to make sure David didn't do anything drastic.

Jackie didn't fare much better. He barely survived the trip to the hospital. Dominator struggled to slow the bleeding as they sped through the streets in a Valentino's backseat. The surgeons were quick to patch him up, but he would still need time to heal. He took three bullets to the left lung, and one came within an inch of his heart. Jackie would be bed ridden for a close to a week. It would be a month before he could even think about being independent again.

Dominator refused any sort of treatment. If a doctor or nurse approached her with anything other than news about Jackie, they were ignored or shoved away. That didn't stop the awkward stares everyone was giving her. Dominator did her best to ignore them. She couldn't risk word getting out that she is this planet's first off-world visitor. That introduction needed to happen on her terms.

It was close to midnight when Jackie came out of surgery. He was unconscious; sleeping off all the drugs the doctors gave him. Various tubes stuck out of his arm and chest, the machines removing some of the stress from his organs. They put him in a room with two other patients, both of which were unrelated to the Maelstrom fight and thus barely received any notice from Dominator. She sat by his bed for a few minutes, contemplating what had transpired.

She knew why she was so attached to Jackie Welles. She knew why they worked so well together on the battlefield. She just didn't want to admit it to herself. On her home planet, she made a point to prevent any potential bonds from forming. She hated the idea of being tied to another person, and it drove her into an extreme independence streak. She was an outcast by choice, everyone else be damned.

Yet here she was...

On a primitive planet in some abandoned corner of a dorky, backwards galaxy, Lord Dominator, last of her kind, formed a Warrior's Bond with a random thug. She guessed the week they spent together helped the bond form quickly, and their fight with Maelstrom cemented it in place. They were stuck with each other.

The whole thing was terrifying. The closest she ever came to companionship was the occasional one-night stand back home. And that's before accounting for the fact that she had spent the last several years in relative isolation with only her bots to keep her company. Now she was attached to another person by some weird, telepathic bond she doesn't fully understand. She couldn't decide which would be worse: trying to break the Warrior's Bond or trying to adapt to its presence.

"V?" a tentative voice spoke, interrupting her thoughts.

"Hm?" Dominator turned and met eyes with Mama Welles. The two women stared at each other, neither quite sure what to say. Dominator decided to turn away, too tired to put in the effort.

"I came as soon as the hospital called," Mama said. "The other Valentinos told me what happened. Jackie has always had a habit of rushing into danger, especially when it was for someone he cared about."

Mama pulled up a second chair and sat next to Dominator. For several minutes, they embraced the silence between them. The only sounds in the room were Jackie's heart monitor and breathing assistance pump. The only thing they cared about was Jackie's wellbeing and so the two women watched over him like a pair of sentries watching over a wounded prince. But the lack of noise eventually got to Mama, forcing her to speak up.