The Galactic Bride

The next few days was kind of a blur for Aki. The ship was traveling to Sheplam, the Mari homeworld, so it would take a few weeks. Later he learned the reason Musa Minor was so far away from Sheplam was because they wanted some time in between the Contest and the wedding. The time spent was to be used to get Aki healthy again, and to purge any dangerous psychological scars he may have. It was laughable to think that a few weeks would erase him of those memories.

Lani was assigned to him again in this aspect, which was fine with him. It seemed by the time he got off of Musa Minor, nearly everyone knew everything about him… well minus stuff that happened on Earth. So it was no secret that Lani was his fiancée, or who Hana was. It still was a shock to him that no one cared that he was to be married to someone else and they didn't care that he had two other "lovers".

Lani's main task was to make sure he hadn't become unhinged. In a way he had. After that experience, Aki wanted more combat training and survival lessons. Lani gave it to him with some reservation at first, but then she realized that physical activity was helping him combat his demons.

His home life had become awkward though. Lani and Hana seemed to be walking on egg shells around him. He could understand that at first. Afterall they had watch him murder people. But it was more than that. He wondered if he had changed that much, or if there was something else going on. He slept on the ground still, but both Hana and Lani gotten over that really quick and started taking the bed. The floor wasn't for them, he knew, but he was also lonely.

The strangeness between them was starting to bug Aki. But he was willing to ignore it until he overheard something. He was in the shower in his tiny cabin when he heard the two of them whispering in the other room. Stealthily he creeped out of the shower and pressed his ear to the door so he could hear them.

"Don't you think it's cruel not to tell him? Someone will bring it up eventually and it'll be a total shock to him." Hana was whispering.

"I know! But it's been so long that he might be mad at us for keeping it from her."

"No he won't. He'll understand that we were waiting to tell him when he had settled down from the Contest."

"But has she? She… she works out all the time and sleeps on the ground still." Lani sounded worried. "She's not the same."

"Would you be the same after something like that?" Hana argued. "He-"

"She. Stop calling her a male. She never was a male." Lani corrected.

"He she, whatever. Aki-chan needs to know the truth about General Anura."

Aki's heart nearly stopped. What truth? He looked at the seeds sitting on the bathroom counter. He carried them with him all the time now. Lani offered to take them to the General's family herself, but Aki told her he wanted to do it. And since then he had taken always kept them close to his heart.

"I just don't want to ruin Aki's memories of her." Lani voice barely was audible. "She was in love with her…"

Aki wrinkled his nose at the thought. He was not in love with the General. He had the fleeting look because she was an attractive woman in a swimsuit down on Musa Minor, but the sex they had was artificial. He only cared for her so much because they literally put each other's lives into the other's hands. It was like losing a friend, not a lover.

"All the more reason she needs to know." Hana emphasized the 'she' in a sarcastic tone.

Aki couldn't take it anymore. Whatever was going on was the reason it had become uncomfortable around the two. He had seen the worst side of General Anura before, he wouldn't be shocked at anything else at this point. So he opened the door he had been listen at and stepped out, allowing them to realize he had been listening to them.

"Aki-chan!" Hana squeaked. "Put some clothes on!"

Aki looked down, forgetting for a moment he didn't have any. At first he was embarrassed, then he shrugged it off, and just placed a towel over him. He didn't know why his body embarrassed Hana, she had seen it naked plenty of times by now. Hell, the whole universe had at this point. He literally had nothing to hide. Perhaps it was because of the way he had came out of the bathroom.

"Just tell me what's going on. I can tell that whatever it was that it's been bothering the both of you."

Lani looked down at her feet. "We didn't want to hurt you, not after everything…"

"I understand." Aki readjusted his towel, as Hana's eyes were staring a hole into his chest. "But, if it's something that I need to know, I'd like to find out in private, not from some noble asshole at some stupid party I'll have to go too."

Lani looked hesitant, but Hana shook her head and came out with it herself. "General Anura is the reason why I speak in the common tongue, Aki-chan. Before she left, she let out one of her seeds and told Lani-chan to …. well you know. She put the seed in and we… anyway, along with learning to read and write there was also the General's memories of the night she came and got us. She wanted me to know her side of things."

Aki wasn't sure how this was common knowledge. In fact this whole thing sounded completely secret. But he let Hana continue as he was sure it was leading to something.

"Hiro's death was an accident." Hana rubbed the back of her neck when she said it. "She wanted to injure him, but he was a moving target and even someone like her has a bad shot every now and then. She saw how trouble the both of us were over it and thought if she took me along it might make up for it. I guess that didn't work because it only fueled you to hate her more. So she used that hate to try and make you stronger. That's what she told me from the seed-memories."

Aki had figured most of that out already. Not the mistake in Hiro's death, but using his anger to get him to do what she wanted. "Okay…"

Lani swallowed before she added on. "The reason we're telling you all that is to tell you about her character. She wasn't-"

"She was kind deep down, I know." Aki told them. "You don't spend however long it was surviving together without getting to know each other. She didn't want to kill those Tarfulles. And I saw her eyes when Lew got killed. She wasn't a murderer."

"There's more than that!" Hana butted in. "She was protecting you."

"What?"

That was something he didn't know. He knew they had each other's backs and that she pushed him to keep him alive. But he wouldn't call that protection. Not in the sense that Hana was talking about. No, the General had let him take risks and pushed him to do things he never would have. She wasn't leaping in front of every challenge to save his life.

"You might not remember." Lani spoke slowly. "But the General was injured the first day you arrived on Musa Minor. Her side had a bruise on it."

"Yeah… she got attacked so it-"

"If you were down there for so long, why didn't it heal?" Lani asked him rhetorically. "That wasn't a simple wound, it was an internal injury. From the day she got it, she was bleeding on the inside and she was slowly dying from it. Towards the end, when you weren't looking, she'd cough up blood."

Aki pictured the General always holding her side. Now that he thought about it, she was tired most of the time too. He chalked it up to her age, but it was more than that. She must have been in pain.

"When you set up camp by that cave, she realized it herself. From that time onward, she was playing for you to win, not her. If she allowed you to do most of the work, she might have been able to out last everyone. Sort of the same strategy Lew had. Your camping spot was perfect, she could have remained hidden the whole time. But she actively pushed herself and you."

"But why?"

"I don't know the reason why she started it. Afterall she took special interest in you before you left." Lani continued. "No one else got her personal training. At the time, if you remember, she wasn't entered into the competition. That part of the story is a mystery."

"But what we do know is what happened on Musa Minor." Hana looked uncomfortable now. "and that fills in the blanks."

"That she looked out for me? That doesn't tell us anything new…"

"It does if you… oh, I'll just come out and say it. She was in love with you, Aki-chan." Hana sighed, as if finally relieving herself of a big secret.

Aki looked at them, wondering what they were talking about. It was just sex. First they thought he loved her. Now they thought she liked him. But then he realized something. Before Lani said 'she was in love with her'. Lani didn't specified who was in love with who. Aki just assumed she was referring to him loving the General. But now he saw it was the other way around. 'I just don't want to ruin Aki's memories of her. She was in love with her.' Aki shook his head.

"No way. Not her."

"Aki-chan. You did not see everything like we did when you were down on that island. The reason the two of you were so popular wasn't because of strategies or any many kills you got. It was the love story. Everyone wanted you to figure it out. The pheroline gas… that was to push things along, as well as give the viewers something to watch other than people not doing anything. Why do you think General Anura gave in so easily?"

"She didn't-"

"She watched you while you were sleeping. She stared at you while you did your chores. And she gave you all of her knowledge in hopes you would survive. And when you weren't looking, when she was alone, she did other things… she even cried."

"That doesn't make any sense…" Aki shook his head again. "That was… she was putting it on for the cameras."

"For what reason? There's no benefit for putting on a show." Hana came back.

Lani shuffled the weight on her the toes to the balls of her feet. "Knowing all that, you look back to when she was training you on board the ship. She was tough on you, but she wanted you to live. Her attitude changed towards you the moment she saw you come out of the rejuvenation chamber. I think… though there is no way of knowing… that she fell in love with you right then and there."

Aki had to laugh at that. "So in a jealous rage she forced Hana-chan to watch me go through the transfer, huh?"

"That was before she saw you as a woman…" Lani reminded him. "After that…she found excuses to be with you, to train you."

Aki didn't want to hear this theory anymore. "She's not like that. You don't know her like I did. She was-"

"Aki-chan! When are you going to realize that you're a beautiful girl now! It's not impossible for someone to crush on you at first sight with the way you look now. Think about Lani… hell even that Wahconese girl Iris. She couldn't stop looking at you. Hell, think about General Anura's reaction to that…"

He couldn't remember what the General's reaction to that was, but he did remember that she was the one that pointed out that Iris was looking at him because he was pretty. And when he denied it, she was quick to refute that.

Hana looked away for a moment. "Then when you came back that first night… I asked you how you felt. I was sure that maybe deep down you loved her because of how much she loved you. But you seemed obvious to it. At first I thought you might be pretending for my sake, but it's true, isn't it. You really didn't know."

Aki couldn't take it anymore. He walked over to his bed and sat down. He tried to remember any clues that the General loved him. There was a smile here or there, but nothing stood out. Then something else came to him. Something he wrote off as a joke. She had done it a few times, and he just brushed that away. Occasionally she had asked him to call her 'Anura' not 'General Anura'. He wouldn't do as she requested as a joke. She'd laugh about it and move on. But was that one of the few times she allowed herself to be weak to him?

Lani sat down next to him, and soon Hana joined him on the other side. Lani leaned her head on his shoulder and spoke in a soft voice. "I didn't want to ruin the memories you had of her. But eventually people are going to start talking about it… asking you questions."

"Yeah." Aki felt his heartache all over again. The General loved him, and he cut off her head. "Is there anything else I should know?"

"I don't know." Hana thought to herself out loud. "I think that's it."

"What about how she died." Aki asked. It was clear that both of them didn't have a clue what he was talking about. "Think about where she was. She wasn't anywhere near the cave. She had sent me away for firewood. She went out to kill Rondo for me, didn't she?"

Both Hana and Lani looked at each other as if that was a revelation. And when they did so, his theory seemed to be true. She allowed him to go get firewood, then planned to take on Rondo herself. With her dying injury she only managed to hurt the Tyrian before Rondo got a killing strike. It was only blind luck that Aki found them while they were fighting.

"So she really did want me to win." Aki said. He remembered the seeds on the bathroom counter, how she had pulled them out knowing she was going to die. He wondered when she had done that. Part of him wanted to know, but the other part didn't. If she loved him and had resigned herself to death, then she probably did so early in the contest.

"Do you believe us now?" Hana asked hesitantly.

"Yeah." Aki looked down at his bare legs. "She died knowing I didn't have a clue on how she felt. And I had to be be the one do it…to finish her off."

"And the whole galaxy thinks you had to kill your lover." Lani said. "That is why you're the most popular winner of the Contest that's there's ever been."