“That saying. ‘My past is behind me’. It’s dumb. And it’s wrong.” She took another step towards him, hopeful when he didn’t step away. “Your past isn’t something you can leave behind. It’s not something that can chase you down. It’s never something you can escape. For better or for worse, your past is always there. It’s not behind you. It’s beneath you. It’s the foundation on which you stand. Every choice you’ve ever made or has ever been made for you built that base and made you who you are today. You may not be defined by your past, but you were definitely created by it. That’s why it’s so important to accept. You don’t have to celebrate it, but you can at least acknowledge it. Running from something that’s holding the weight of your footsteps is pointless, so you might as well accept that it’s there.”
Tanin said nothing for a moment. He looked at her with an unreadable expression as she caught up with him. Putting her hands on his chest. He was tense, but he didn’t step back this time.
“I’m not naïve, you know,” she said, staring at that divot between his collarbones outlined under his shirt. “I get that you came from a dark past. I get that you’ve done some bad things. I’m not asking you to relive them all with me. But I want to know you, which means knowing who you used to be. I’ll even trade you. My past for yours.”
He scoffed. “That’s not a fair trade. Your past is worth far more than mine.”
“I didn’t take you for the kind with self-esteem issues,” she grinned.
“There’s no issue about it.” He broke, his stiffness easing as he swept an arm around her waist and jerked her up on her toes, holding her against his chest just that easily. “I know my worth. I think you don’t realize yours if you’re flirting with someone like me.”
She shrugged. “My mom always said I had an abundance of audacity and no sense to direct it.”
“What?”
“Yeah, I think she was trying to call me a special kind of dumb.”
“I hope she was joking.”
“Oh, no,” Garnet laughed. “I told you, our parents only wanted Goldie. Everything I did was cause for criticism and condemnation. They called me stupid to my face plenty.”
His hand tightened on her waist. “You didn’t deserve that.”
Garnet’s belly swooped with delight. She couldn’t keep the smile off her face. “I know. Thank you for saying it though.”
Tanin didn’t respond immediately. But he was giving her a searching look. She couldn’t guess what was going on in his head, so she just appreciated the firmness of his muscles under her touch. If she moved her fingers up, she could just brush his bare skin around the hem of his shirt. That little burst of light was so subtle, but it was beautiful. A little white firework under his gray skin.
“My mother was soft. Like you.”
Garnet’s eyes darted up quickly. Not prepared for that. She blinked, her lips parted in surprise, but she didn’t want to ask a question in case he stopped talking.
Tanin took a slow breath. “My father was a criminal. I don’t know what he did. Doesn’t really matter either. All I know is that he was on the run from Tella’za. That’s my species home planet. He escaped from there with my mother when she was pregnant. Rik-Vane was the only place they could hide. My father was killed there when I was too young to remember him. My mother tried to protect me, but it wasn’t really possibly. Rik-Vane is a terrible place. Not the kind of place for a soft female like her. It destroyed her, I know. She could only hold on long enough to see me to adulthood before she followed my father.”
Garnet’s breath caught, understanding what he wasn’t saying. His mother was miserable her entire life, then killed herself the moment she thought Tanin would be okay without her.
She left him all alone on the worst station in the universe.
“I’m sorry.”
“Why?” He gave her a sharp look. “You had nothing to do with it.”
“That doesn’t mean I can’t feel sorry. How old were you?”
“Old enough.”
She frowned. “You don’t want to tell me?”
“I don’t know.”
“Huh?”
“I don’t know how old I was. We never kept track of my age. There was no bureaucracy like that on Rik-Vane, and my birth wasn’t recorded officially. Even if it was, Rik-Vane doesn’t have seasons, and no one really keeps track of the years passing. I suppose I was an adult by that point. But if you’re asking for my age, I couldn’t tell you.”
“You don’t know how old you are?”
“Officially, I’m forty-one Standard years old. Realistically, it’s a guess based on how old I look.”
He didn’t look forty-one. But Standard years were different from Earth years, so she wasn’t sure how the number converted. But that wasn’t what was most important on her mind.
