I am posting my thoughts and memories through another man. A man closest to me who I trust and confide in completely. I do this through him to avoid exposing my identity and consequently the identities of others related to the story to the general public. This is a true story, and some of the characters involved might be recognizable, so I will respect their privacy by not posting under my own name. It might also bring on retribution and vengeance, and though through my military background I am no stranger to violence, I don’t invite it anymore. I’ve found another way to live. There is another life I have to think about, and I would never forgive myself if harm came to him. But I want my story to be heard, even if it’s just by one person.
I have used photos of myself and my friend in this account, but I should mention that the pictures have been slightly modified. They show me considerably younger than I really am. On other photos I look a bit different. It is to make it more difficult to track down who I am.
I was born into a Deteis family. I won’t recount my whole childhood, will just say that I was born into middle-class and had relatively comfortable developmental years. Since I was very little I showed proficiency in mathematics and physical sciences. I was additionally very adept at spatial thinking and navigation. So I was selected for flight academy. I was happy about that because I loved to fly and it’s what I would have chosen myself.
For years I did work with the military advancing at a steady pace. I started by doing cargo flights, to flying reconnaissance and sensitive payload, to eventually running ops into enemy territory with a small crew. I was living my dream, flying around the universe and helping keep peace at home. It seemed that’s all I needed from life to feel good and fulfilled. I did not know there was anything else. As a capsuleer that was supposed to be my whole fate.
It turned out untrue.
Capsuleers are not known for Love. Love is an ancient myth of our ancestors. At some point during our evolution the human race lost Love and that’s how we wound up in space ruthlessly conquering galaxies and whole civilizations. I was not sure if Love ever was real for how fantastical and impossible it sounded to me from ancient texts. No other animal species can be said to definitively exhibit it. This persistent and overpowering desire and need for one single being. I thought it was just a fairy tale or a misrepresentation. Until I felt it myself.
It has somehow been that the most important events in my life have happened by accident.
The day I met him, I was supposed to be somewhere else. But I was stuck. My ship’s navigation systems refused to come online, and I was in Amarr space where public religious festivities made it very difficult to find an engineer to take a look at what was going on. I should have switched into a new ship, I don’t know why I didn’t. I didn’t wanna leave my Falcon behind.
So I stayed and waited in the empty space station, till finally I could talk to an engineer. But before that happened, a Gallente man in his late 30s arrived. He, being a Gallente, didn’t participate in the Amarrian religious festivities either. He was just in the area to pick up some things.
I observed him from afar at first. I could tell he was the type of guy who was physically fit just right. He was close to my build, and for some reason that comforted me. The way he moved captivated me but I didn’t realize the full appeal till years later. I knew there was something about him that I was drawn to, even though I couldn’t put it into words. Whatever it was, was strong enough to make an approach.
I had never had Gallente friends. Due to the nature of my work I had little opportunity to make friends with them. And I had been told they were full of themselves and dangerous. If not in a physical way — though I don’t doubt that’s true as well — then in the ideas that are in their heads and that they stubbornly try to spread all across the universe. Their freedom, and personal liberties they allow themselves. I’d been told that they don’t care about anybody but themselves. That Gallente are the embodiment of selfishness and wasteful personal extravagance so much abhorred in the Caldari society I grew up in. And I held a certain prejudice on what the exchange between the two of us would be like. But I was bored, and I really wanted the company of another human being that moment. Although, as I later came to realize, that wasn’t all that was driving me.
But no sooner had we started talking that I had to admit that what I had been told and what I saw in front of me were two different realities. Here was a friendly eloquent man who looked at me with eyes I found myself drowning in. He was open, curious about me and my cultural background, and his smile lightened up the loneliness I had felt stuck in that station for days. He was so easy to talk to and I found myself divulging information about myself that I had never told a complete stranger before. I trusted him, from those very first moments.
When he got the things he had come for, I dreaded another string of days of abandonment till finally the Amarr would be done with their celebrations. So I was greatly surprised when the Gallente offered to stay in the station with me to keep me company till the engineers would be back.
I didn’t understand what I felt for him at first. I had never been told that a man can love another man. I thought it was just friendship. And it was, but it was also so much more at the same time. And it was different than any other friendship I’d had. I yearned to be in his company, to sit beside him, to look into his eyes. No friend had had such an effect on me before. This desire consumed me so much, it was all I thought about when I was away from him. My thoughts didn’t go farther than that in the beginning. Just to see him, those dark blue eyes, and to hear his voice was all I allowed myself to think of.
But while I was telling myself I wanted him as a friend, he —of course— was fully aware of what was happening between us.
He had already shattered one reality for me when we got to know each other in that deserted station in Kor-Azor, and now he was about to shatter another.
Gotten back home, I was sent right back the way I came from to Kor-Azor. Before I headed out there again, I contacted the Gallente to joke that instead of all that trouble I went through to get back home, I should have stayed in Kor-Azor as it would have saved me countless number of jumps and time traveling between the two regions. I expected to hear his voice laughing at the silliness of it all, and maybe invite me to make a stop in Sinq Laison to show me his home – something he had already said he wanted me to see – but that was the extent of the exchange. He didn’t write back to me. I briefly mourned the possibility of the two of us ever being friends and started thinking I had let myself be deceived and here it was the cold uncaring selfishness of the Gallente man with his fleeting attention span and superficiality. I felt hurt, but the real reason evaded me.
I went back to Kor-Azor. I carried out my duties. And as I was setting myself up to spend the night at a local station, there he was. He had come back there just to see me. He hadn’t written, because he wanted it to be a surprise. Knowledge of that made me feel exhilarated —nobody had done anything like it for me— but scared at the same time. I didn’t know what I was scared of, but I could no longer feel calm in his presence. My heart was beating twice as fast as normal, and I was nervous. I didn’t understand what was making me so nervous around him.
It all became clear the moment he touched me. I should have seen it all coming, but I didn’t. And even though it should have made it clear to me at that moment what it was I felt for him — it didn’t. I recoiled from his touch as if he’d attacked me. It took him off guard. By now I know he had good reason to expect me to react positively to him, but back then I couldn’t admit it. I had been thrown into a completely new reality in a matter of a second. One that was uncharted, unfamiliar, and threatening. It was sink or swim and I felt like I was sinking.
Who did he think he was to allow such liberties with me? This is exactly what the Gallente have a reputation for — their attempts to bring everybody in line with their worldview and values. Their insolence in thinking that their values are better than others’ and we need a lesson on life. This is what I told myself was happening.
I no longer wanted to talk to him. And I rejected all of his attempts to try to communicate with me further. I prepared my ship and flew back home in the dead of night even though I needed sleep. At home, I told no-one. Nobody knew I had even met him. It would be easy to erase all memories of him.
(Thanks for Anna Dyneaux for help with the pictures).
Happy to help! It’s a very touching story so far, I’m looking forward to the rest of it.
Months went by and I didn’t see him. I was busy with my assignments and professional duties, and I was thankful for that. I thought the whole affair was a thing of the past and I never had to see him again.
But I was wrong. I saw him a few months later, this time in Caldari space. Only a few systems away from my home. When I saw him, this time I was furious. And I didn’t even try to hide it. As if I hadn’t made myself clear I didn’t want to talk to him again! Why would he still try to look me up?
I was cold and rude to him as he came to ask me how I was doing. And I fled the system as soon as I could. But I ran into him again a couple of weeks later in Jita. I knew he went there a lot, as he was doing investing on the market, but really, I had reckoned he would steer clear of me – and on this he just seemed to refuse to comply with my expectations. The biggest trade hub in the universe and I had to tick it off my list of places I could visit in order to avoid seeing him. I had to come up with these elaborate excuses to my friends and family why I wouldn’t go to Jita, that sounded ridiculous even to myself and I’m not sure they even believed me then.
I was so focused on being angry at him for his continued attempts to talk to me and to him seemingly being immune to my less than friendly treatment of him that I completely failed to contemplate the obvious. It didn’t strike me as odd yet why I couldn’t just simply tell him to stay away –I had never actually vocalized it to him-- or why his presence was all that was needed to send me into a tailspin. The intensity of my reaction to him was out of place. But I was still oblivious to it.
A year passed. I had isolated myself and dedicated my time to serving my State. It made me feel good and useful and it distracted me from my own personal needs and desires. I thought of him as little as possible and when I did I told myself I had handled the situation well and avoided being compromised. But something inside me no longer felt right. I had never felt as free and authentic as when I had been with him. And nothing erased that knowledge. Those first moments I spent with him, I couldn’t lie to myself that I wanted to live them again. Nobody else made me feel the way he did. I didn’t feel like I had to pretend or hide anything when I was with him. I could be completely honest, be myself, and he would understand.
Why did he have to be gay? We could have been such great friends. I finally met a man who understood me, and he had to ruin it. I was mad at him for that. I was angry that he took away our friendship. He thought only of himself. I had been brought up to put the needs of others before my own. But he only cared about his needs. I was getting more and more mad just thinking about it.
Gallente have a reputation for being opinionated. But what they really should be known for most is their persistence.
When I met him it had been summer time. The month of June. And it was summer time again when I found myself in Amarr, at the second largest trade hub. I was aware he frequented the market there as well, but I didn’t expect to run into him. I hadn’t seen him in a year, and I figured it was by now all forgotten anyway. He had probably moved on with his life and found somebody else. The sting I felt when thinking that didn’t register in my consciousness at first either. But I was wrong. Again. I was wrong a lot back then. There he was. He had seen my name show up in system local and he ambushed me. He wouldn’t use such a word himself, but that’s what it felt like to me at the time.
When I saw him again, I couldn’t get past how beautiful he looked. I’d noticed it about him from the get go, but I had never admitted that I thought this way about him. But now it seemed more striking than ever. And I failed to deny it anymore. I don’t know if it was the long duration of our separation or something else, but I was acutely aware how I found him physically attractive.
For his part he tried to be more easy on me. He just enquired how I’d been, and tried to make small talk, which I know he dislikes to do, but he was afraid of scaring me away again, and so he kept it pretty casual.
In the end he invited me over to his quarters for dinner. That, I knew, was dangerous. Being alone with him was the most dangerous thing in the world. I told him I didn’t have time, but that bluff didn’t go far when he asked if I really didn’t have even 30 minutes to spare.
He wouldn’t leave me alone and I was tired being angry at him. It was the easiest thing talking to him, and it still felt like he was my friend. Even after all that had happened. He was still so open and genuine in his interest in me that I couldn’t hold it against him. So I went with him. I should have known it would change everything. That I would never be able to go back to my life as I knew it ever again.
I had been the one who started this whole thing. That’s what I was thinking about as I was sitting in his quarters waiting for him to serve us dinner. Yes, he was the one who did all the pursuing. He took all the lead from there and I had held him accountable for everything. But I was the one who noticed him. I had walked up him. I had looked at him and I had started it. And it wasn’t because I was bored. It wasn’t because I had no-one else to talk to. He wasn’t the only person in that station that day. There were others. Others I never looked at. Others I didn’t feel pulled towards. Others who could have easily entertained me as well. But I wasn’t interested in them. He alone had captivated me. He was the only one I saw. I had started talking to him, because I needed to know him. Something inside me was not okay with letting him disappear into the vastness of space never to be seen again.
I had blocked this part out of my consciousness for so long that now that I remembered it, it made me feel subdued. I was silent as I watched him make grapefruit juice in the kitchen. I didn’t know what to say to him anymore. Frankly, I didn’t understand why he still bothered with me. Every other person in the universe would have given up on me. Would have walked away and never looked back. Why didn’t he? Why was he so easy on me? Not a single bad word to me, not a single off look.
‘’Are you happy?’’
He peered at me with his calm mysterious eyes, and that’s what he chose to ask.
How did he know to ask that question? Just like that? We had been talking about weather conditions and station renovation works. And then he comes out with that?
I wanted to say ‘yes’. But I knew it wasn’t true. And I couldn’t look into his eyes and lie. So I said nothing. Which, likely, was an answer in itself. He came and sat next to me. And this time I didn’t pull away when his hand found mine. And suddenly I didn’t realize why I had been so scared. Having him next to me, touching me, felt like the most natural thing in the world. And I had a reaction to his touch. A reaction I had never let myself have to another man.
He looked at me, and his eyes seemed to look right through to the core of me. I felt naked before him. Nobody else had looked at me that way before. It was the moment of truth. I could no longer detach my eyes from his. They were fixated on his soul, forming a bond with him through some invisible and indestructible force.
And then his lips were on mine and the reality shifted. This is what I had been afraid of all this time – that he would kiss me and I would like it. But why was I afraid of it? It felt so natural and pure. His warm body was right next to mine, and it felt good to touch it. My arms naturally went around him and pulled him closer. I didn’t want to let go of him anymore. I stopped thinking about anything. I was only feeling – and what I felt was the most intense thing in the world.
I could describe in minute detail everything that happened that night. It has all been etched into my memory. But the details are too intimate to share. Only he and I know exactly what happened. And this is how it should be. But that night changed everything. My life as I knew it was gone.
To be continued…
(Thanks again to Anna Dyneaux for helping out with the pictures!)
When I finally went home, it felt empty. My personal quarters and my things I had known for years didn’t matter anymore. I needed to figure out what I would do. I still had professional duties to my corporation and State. But it would never be acceptable here if I made a life with another man. But being away from him had become unacceptable to me. I felt deceived by my family and the society I’d believed in. There was nothing wrong in two men being together, but I had been told that’s how it was.
I still harbored some hope that my relationship with him could be, if not acceptable, then tolerated in my immediate circle, so that I could continue my employment and make a life with him. There were my parents to contend with, who would be completely surprised by this state of affairs in my life. There was my brother, and my sister, but I was less worried about them. They were more adaptable to change than my parents. There were a few close friends, and I would need to tell them eventually as well. And, of course, my employer. I was not convinced I had to inform them of this evolution. There was a chance they would see it as an infringement of societal conventions, and possibly, as a threat to Caldari society as a whole. I didn’t know what they would do or how far their authority in these matters extended exactly. The history was silent on this topic, and neither did I know of any real-life examples of anyone in my situation.
But of one thing I was sure of – I would not leave him. It was out of the question. I had lived the last two years trying to deny my own self. For two whole years I had put my life and feelings on the backseat to fall in line with what was expected of me. I tried my hardest to forget about my own needs. And all it brought me was sadness, loneliness, and shame. I would not live like that anymore. One hour with him had erased all of that – it had made me feel happiness and fulfillment like I’d never felt before. I now understood those ancient writings describing Love. I now knew what they meant when somebody said they were in Love. It felt like a force bigger than myself and I felt lucky to have found it.
He came to see me again a couple of days later. He couldn’t stay away and it reassured me. I knew I wasn’t alone anymore. We both needed the other, and I felt like I had to make up for the two years I had avoided him. We started seeing each other like that, at short intervals, I would go to him, he would come to me. We would spend hours just talking and getting to know the other. And then the more intimate moments that made me feel things I’d never felt or imagined before.
I had found the one. The person I wanted to share my life with. And he was another man. And nothing had ever felt so right.
I am happy for you. I grew up in the State but I do not remember much about it. I have recently found love as well, and it is an incredible story, despite ours only lasting months so far. Maybe one day I will share some of it.
That’s great to hear! I wish you the best with your love. And it would be nice to hear the story some day, when you’re ready to share it.
Part B.
Home of Heart.
For the time being I avoided worrying about the future. I still thought I could continue my employment with the Caldari. I was two years away from reaching a rank that would triple my income. After that I could take it easier. He understood it and supported me wholeheartedly, which surprised me because I knew he also wanted to spend more time with me. But we would find ways to sneak moments with each other. There was no staying away from him anymore.
For a while that worked. And I’d forgot it was risky for me. There was the gay aspect, but also because he was a Gallente and I was a Deteis. I had to think of the whole, and anything that didn’t benefit or outright threatened the whole was to be relinquished. But this line of reasoning was starting to crack the more I felt happiness and the more I realized I had the capacity to make him happy. Nothing I’d ever done had felt more meaningful to me. And I didn’t see anything wrong with that, neither why I should have sacrificed my Love just for what? How would doing that benefit the Caldari society exactly? How would our Love threaten it?
Realizations like these started to erode my lifelong beliefs and convictions. I felt more and more connected to him the more time I spent with him. He was my friend and my lover. He had become a priority I would no longer compromise. I had to find a way to live with him included in my life.
And then it happened. Somebody saw us together. It was reported to my higher-ups and all the details of our meetings that could be traced down were traced down and scrutinized. I was ordered to the headquarters to answer to what was going on.
From the start they were focused on my relationship with him. I was questioned about how I knew him, for how long I had known him, the nature of our relationship, everything. I told them he was my friend – it was the truth, even though not the entire truth. But upon further questioning I understood they thought I was secretly working for the Gallente and betraying my State. I told them it was not true. Just because I had a Gallente friend didn’t mean I was betraying my State. But my frequent meetings with him, most of which took place at night, had become suspicious to them. It didn’t look like they believed me.
They ordered me to end the friendship. Just like that, it was given to me like any other order. My whole being froze in horror at those words. I wasn’t prepared for that. They might as well have punched me in the gut, because the hurt I felt was the same. Or worse. They can’t tell me who to be friends with and who not! I tried to reason with them, but all such my attempts were interpreted as signs of me being compromised and made by a Gallente spy. In their eyes there was no legitimate reason why I needed to keep this friendship.
They questioned me some more and it became obvious it wasn’t just some small formality. My life was on the line, but nobody cared how I felt about the consequences. I had become compromised in their eyes, and in order to prove my loyalty to the State my relationship with him had to come to an end. ‘‘Simple as that!’’ I was told to end it and be done with him. I was to submit to their orders, there could be no other option. I would suffer a temporary revoking of my security clearance and be made to work analytics for a year, but after that I would get my rank and clearance back. I was never to see or talk to the Gallente again. Failing that would leave them with no options but to terminate my services altogether. It would mean loss of employment, pay, my privileges, and citizenship. I would be de facto homeless, and with no rights in the State.
I had known deep down that things could take this turn. That I could be forced to relinquish my relationship with him. But the knowledge of that possibility didn’t do anything to prepare me for the shock I felt when finally standing face to face with the reality. To say that the prospect of losing the Love I had come to know and cherish was painful was an understatement. I felt like my soul had been ripped out of my chest and trampled on. I didn’t know how I would ever recover from the hurt. He had come to mean everything to me. He was the first thing I thought about after I woke up. He was the last thing on my mind before falling asleep. My life without him in it was unimaginable now.
But I couldn’t tell them we were lovers. I was afraid it would make things even worse. I wondered whether really nobody before me had been in that situation. I desperately needed to know how to handle it. But I didn’t know who to trust with this information.
There was no room for argument. I went home. There was a lump in my throat all the way there. Everything had changed in a matter of just a few hours. I had known happiness --happiness I didn’t even fathom was possible before-- and now I had to give it up.
As with previous images, Anna Dyneaux developed them – thank you so much!
I sat in my room and it had never felt so alien to me. It felt like the fabric of the universe itself was falling apart. There was nothing solid to hold onto anymore. I looked around in my home, and my things I’d derived pleasure from before didn’t comfort me anymore. My home that was empty of his presence felt like a gigantic black hole in the middle of my life, heavy and sucking me into its miserable isolationist world. I felt depressed at the prospect of loneliness I would live without him. I understood it would kill me. Not physically. But it would slowly grind down my mind and my heart to pieces. Until there was nothing left.
But if I wanted to keep my job and status I had to end the friendship and go back to my life as it was before I met him. I’d had my job, my assignments, my sense of self as part of the whole, my friends and family. I’d lived it all before. Quite satisfactorily. For decades. Then why was the idea of going back to that so unacceptable now? Because he would not be in it. Like a person who has spent their whole life in perpetual winter, I had come to know what summer warmth and light felt like. I had seen the nature in bloom, and the idea of going back to the frigid darkness of winter was intolerable to me.
As I sat on my bed and went over the whole situation and details over and over again in my head, it dawned on me that I had a choice. It was up to me to decide what to do. For the first time in my life, I questioned the orders I had been given. It was as if a new window had been opened and I saw things in a different light than before. Something in me had fundamentally changed after knowing him.
I had to trust him. The man I’d come to know and care deeply about in only a few months. The man I’d grown to love, so readily, and so unexpectedly. And I had to trust myself. That together we would figure it out and find a way. My fate was not predetermined by the rules and ideas somebody else had come up with. Those rules and ideas were flawed if they prohibited Love.
It meant that if I stayed with him I would no longer have a home in Caldari space. I would be outcast. Never minding the fact that to my superiors it would be an act of confirmation that I was working against them, me choosing him over the State was the ultimate act of betrayal. My first duty was to the State. The public welfare and welfare of my community. I was not supposed to think of myself. Even if it destroyed me. But maybe I didn’t believe that anymore. As difficult as the choice seemed on the surface, the fact was, from the moment I was told to end the friendship I knew deep down I would not do it.
It all came down to my heart. He was in my heart. Everything about him, from the way he touched me and looked at me. From the way he smiled when he saw me. From the way he held me. The way he kissed me. And I decided to prioritize that what was kindling between us. I belonged with him.
To my mind, the act of betrayal would have been to leave him. I knew we had done nothing wrong. Our Love hurt no-one, it caused no damage. It was a force of good. Submitting to that order would have meant betraying him, with whom I had bonded. It was my responsibility to safeguard our Love. I was acutely aware of the pain and hurt I would cause if I left him now. I wasn’t thinking of myself when I made the decision. I hadn’t changed, I acted the way I always did. The thing that had changed was the object of my devotion. My duty and responsibility now was to him and his wellbeing.
I started packing my things. There was nothing more for me here. I’d made up my mind and I knew there was no way I would continue to be employed by the Caldari, so I needed to get my things together and get out. I felt sorry that this was the way I had to leave, but my relationship with him would have been impossible there. We hadn’t talked about moving in, I was just gonna show up at his door. But I was certain he wasn’t going to turn me away.
I was almost ready, just needed to go over my things to make sure I hadn’t forgot anything. I didn’t know when I would be able to return to my home again, so I wanted to make sure I got everything I needed. I would contact my friends and family later and explain what happened. Right now there was no time to do it properly.
I messaged my CO letting him politely know that I could not abide by the order given and thus giving in my resignation. I had never gone through anything like this, so I believed the process would be simple and straightforward, if unpleasant. My career would come to an end. There would be some formalities to attend to, but that would be it.
Unfortunately, I couldn’t have been more mistaken.
I was finishing packing my things and was about to call my lover to tell him to expect me. But before I could do that security services from my employer arrived. I was told they were to take me to my new assignment. It was unusual, though not altogether unheard of to be escorted like that, but after having essentially just resigned, it should have sent more alarm bells ringing in my head. It didn’t because I still trusted my superiors. As it was, I didn’t understand the seriousness of the situation until it was too late.
I was whisked away in the night to a constellation 30 jumps away from my home. A location with no connection to me. Nobody would know to look for me there.
I’m going to suggest that ignoring another person who has not actually noticed you is the best approach.
Did I say hello ? I am a Miner who likes to mine Rocks and sometimes the type of Rocks don’t really matter as they are Just within the present with their shininess.
It was a dead-end peripheral region I had never been to before. Truly the ass-end of nowhere. I was dumped and left there in a station with no functional communication facilities, with my pilot’s license suspended, to do paperwork for a year. At least that’s what I was told. The ‘‘paperwork’’ amounted to a whole station full of folders and hand-written accounts running back a thousand years that needed to be analyzed and relevant info trigitized. There were two of us working there, and knowing what my ‘‘crime’’ was for landing such a gig, I wondered about the other guy and what he had done to deserve being forgotten there.
And forgotten he was! I was not encouraged hearing his account of his situation. He had been there for 7 years, waiting for his license to be reinstated and allowed to return to his former position. He, too, had been told he would only be there for a year, but his case that was pending review, was facing bureaucratic challenges that seemed endless and so there he still was.
I was horrified at the prospect of the same fate befalling myself. I understood immediately after hearing his story that there was no real motivation for them to let me out of there when the time came to it. I knew too much, I was now close friends with a Gallente, and they didn’t like that at all. I didn’t want to think about it. I still had friends in the service I could turn to, and I believed my expertise was valuable. So, even though deep down I was afraid of the worst, I suppressed such fears initially. I would deal with it if and when it came to that.
As I was settling in that first night my thoughts were with my lover. I had no idea to what conclusions he would come to seeing my sudden absence. He would likely determine that I got scared off again. To disappear without a word, without a single trace. Without even saying goodbye. My heart ached just thinking about it. Even if he didn’t think I had ditched him, he would have no way of finding me. I had had no time to send out a message to him before I was brought there. I regretted bitterly not setting up some sort of a communication system with him. I was smarter than that, and I should have got it done.
I was determined to be reunited with him, even though I had no idea how I would achieve that. A day before I had fallen asleep in his arms, and then I was alone in a cold damp room farther from him than I’d ever been.
I went to my new work and got the hang of it quickly. It wasn’t anything difficult, just dull for someone who was used to flying around the universe. I tried to enquire the other guy what he had done to end up in there, but he looked at me with an undecipherable expression and told me it was better if I didn’t know. I already had an idea, although I could have been mistaken.
After the first couple of weeks of diligently doing my new job, I started taking a look at the station’s communications systems. Supposedly, they were broken, but my hope was that they could either be repaired or, failing that, modified enough to send out a message in the classical morse code. I had not buried hope of contacting my lover and letting him know where I was and what had become of me.
The station itself was in a dead pocket of space. It didn’t even have a beacon to hone in on for anybody to be able to find it. You had to know the exact coordinates, and be really good at navigating to be able to find it. The biggest problem was that even if I somehow managed to fix the communications, I did not know the coordinates. I would not be able to instruct him how to locate me. The system itself was over 100AU wide. To search for one station in that vast emptiness would take more than a lifetime.
The guy sharing my fate told me I was wasting my time with the equipment. He had already tried everything to repair it, it was not coming online. I persisted with it regardless. You never know what he might have missed. I worked on that thing tirelessly every day after I was done with ‘‘paperwork’’. It was my only hope of ever being reunited with my lover again. However, the system was unnecessarily complex and spread out, and without the schematics I was just groping in the dark trying to repair it. All my efforts with it failed me, but I refused to give up. It was my only lifeline.
The nights I spent alone in my quarters. Reading a book in the dimly lit bedroom or taking care of the station’s gardens that provided our food. I tried to keep my spirits up and not focus so much on the misery I was certainly in. All that free time gave me a chance to go over things in my past and put things into perspective. I went over the whole situation, and how I ended up there. I felt no regrets. Given the chance, I would do it all over again, just to know him.
Thanks to @Anna_Dyneaux for the picture!
I tried to get acquainted with the man sharing my sad fate, but he was quiet and withdrawn. He seemed disconnected and distrusting of human contact. I guess 7 years of isolation will do that to a man. He didn’t want to talk. I was on my own.
Weeks turned into months, and months turned into I don’t know what. From a certain point I didn’t fathom the passage of time anymore. It seemed to have ceased to exist. I started hallucinating. Seeing my love again. Seeing us together. I didn’t regret a moment spent with him. Even though being with him was the reason I was in that horrible situation, I would have done it all over again. But I couldn’t deny that it started to wear on my psyche. I felt isolated and abandoned, forgotten. Maybe nobody was looking for me? Maybe he didn’t care after all. It certainly seemed so the more time I spent in that station. Every day against all likelihood I was hoping for him to arrive. To find me. But what if he wasn’t even looking? I disappeared and maybe he wrote me off for good. Why would he even look for me? He would have initially tried to get in touch with me, but the absolute silence on my end would have been hard to explain with anything other than my rejection of him. I got scared once. He’ll think that’s what happened this time as well and move on.
I knew I had to stop thinking like that. It did me no good. I knew I had to try and keep my sanity. If I lost that, all was lost.
I didn’t know how much time I had spent there. Every day looked the same. And so it was that on one of those days that was otherwise just like any other as I was done with work and retiring to my quarters, that I walked out to the bridge. I used to go there every evening in the beginning, in hopes of seeing him arrive, but nobody came and I soon gave up the long walk to the area. That day I went. I walked out there and I was so lost in my own thoughts that I missed the ship that had recently docked. But I didn’t miss him.
It was dark. Even the lights didn’t function in this forsaken station. I could barely make out my own limbs. All I saw was a solitary figure in the darkness standing on that bridge, and even though I couldn’t see clearly I knew it was him. My heart did its own dance in my chest as soon as I laid my eyes on him. I hadn’t felt my heartbeat in months, and now it was wild with excitement. I stared at him not entirely sure if he wasn’t an illusion, but he was there, looking right at me. He did come! I had been on the verge of losing all hope, and just one look at him brought me back to life. I could feel blood running in my veins again. I was not alone.
I ran to him, into his arms, and feeling the warmth of his body ascertained that I was not hallucinating. He was real. His arms around me were real. His lips on my face. I clung to him, fearing that if I let go he would disappear and I would slip back into that void I had been encompassed in and become nothingness.
‘‘We need to go. We don’t have a lot of time’’.
I wanted to hold him and kiss him. I had missed him so much. But he rushed me to pack my things.
‘‘They were gonna leave you here’’.
I knew that. We went and got my belongings. They weren’t many. He got me on board his Hecate and flew me out of there. Just like that. Months of desperation and hopelessness, months of utter solitude and engulfing loneliness, months I spent toiling over that useless communications equipment, and now it was that easy. Just board the ship, and go. It looked easy and I almost didn’t believe it.
I don’t remember the flight home, to his place. The exhaustion of all those months spent in oblivion finally caught up with me in the safety of him. When we arrived at his – our – home I sat down on the couch in the living room, and I was out. I fell into a slumber that lasted for 70 hours. At times I drifted out of it to find him sleeping next to me, but I was too tired to stay conscious, and didn’t come to till 3 days later.
Thank you Anna Dyneaux, for help with the picture!
Such a relief to hear you got out of that place! I can’t but wonder if your fellow prisoner is still toiling away in that dead station, even his name forgotten? Did you try to take him along? He might have been able to seek asylum in the Federation, if his crime was anything like the one you were accused of.
Your concern for him is touching, Anna. The next post will provide a little bit of info on what happened to him. We didn’t forget about him, but I won’t reveal what happened just yet, my guy was gonna do that in his next writing.
I woke up to the sounds of low music and the smell of fresh grapefruit. I opened my eyes, and found myself still on his couch. I had a cover over me and he had undressed me. I felt confused for the first couple of seconds till I remembered I was no longer a captive in that station.
‘‘It’s about time’’. He was beaming at me from his kitchen island, there making the grapefruit juice he loves so much.
‘‘Yeah, I’m sorry. I was so tired’’.
‘‘No apologies necessary’’.
He walked up to me and brought me a glass of his trademark juice. It was from a fruit from a tree he grew from seed himself, he said. Then he took me in his arms. We had been apart for too long and I needed the physical contact. Feeling his body next to mine, the way he held me – I had missed it so much.
The simplest things mean all the world when one is deprived of everything. I hadn’t missed my job or flying or my things. I’d missed him. I knew I had made the right call. Those months of separation had been trying on my system, not just mentally, but also physically and emotionally. But I had been able to withstand it. When I was rested and I had perspective, I knew I wouldn’t have been able to live with myself if I had been the man to betray him. No privilege in this world would have been worth it.
‘‘How much do you know about what happened?’’
He said he had bits and pieces but not the whole story. And he wanted to hear it from me. I told him. Everything that had taken place. Ending with the reality how I no longer had a home, money, nothing.
‘‘You have a home here’’. There was no question about where I would be living.
Our eyes were stuck looking at each other and I finally felt safe. For all that time I was away I hadn’t known what would become of me. At times I had felt that I was destined to end my days in that dead station, the silence and separation had been overwhelming.
I pulled him in and kissed him. I needed to feel his love and I was not disappointed. He wrapped his arms around me and I was where I was supposed to be. When I looked at him, I could see I hadn’t been the only one who had suffered, though. He told me the story of finding me.
I had been in that station for a year and a half. He had looked for me every day. First he waited for me in my home system, but when I didn’t show up for a couple of weeks he knew something was very wrong. He asked the Caldari authorities, but they naturally stonewalled him; he even asked some of my friends, but either they didn’t know or didn’t talk. Talking to the Caldari got him nowhere. He turned to a Gallente friend who was a diplomat, and who, upon some lengthy and confidential process, was able to find a Caldari contact who could lead him to me. After repeated meetings and persistent delaying from that contact, however, it turned out all that guy wanted was to get money out of him in exchange for my coordinates, which he didn’t even have access to.
While I had felt abandoned and forgotten in that station, he felt hopeless as every lead evaporated before his eyes. He didn’t even know if I was alive and had feared the worst by that point.
It was after one of his meetings with the Caldari contact, that he noticed a Deteis man he’d seen somewhere before. He didn’t know who he was, but he knew he’d seen him with me at one point. Not believing it was just a coincidence he ran into the Deteis, he approached him. He turned out to be an old colleague of mine. For some reason my man trusted him. Maybe because he had seen me trust the guy. But also the Deteis seemed different than everybody else he’d talked to. He seemed like he cared. The Deteis explained as much as he knew about what happened to me, which wasn’t much, but was at least enough to assure I was still alive.
He would help him. ‘‘You’re not the only one’’, was all he said when asked why. My colleague would access my coordinates, but he warned him that it would leave a trace. He didn’t know if that meant exposing the fact that he was searching for me, or if it was just for a clerical log. But he had to assume the worst. So, once the coordinates were accessed, he needed to move fast. It was not that the station itself was being surveilled – its offline nature was its defense, in fact, and there were no regular patrols to it – but the accessing of the coordinates in the military database might have alerted the authorities to a potential breach which, in turn, might have sent a small force to the area.
He arrived in the system before the coordinates were accessed, to give him as much of a head start as possible. He was in his Hecate which he had slightly modified himself, and which had a good balance between speed and defenses, without sacrificing offensive capabilities. Given the coordinates he wasted not a second. When he arrived at that station he didn’t expect to find anybody there as it seemed empty and abandoned. It was completely dark and looked to be just a piece of space debris, incapable of sustaining any life inside. But the coordinates he’d been given didn’t lie. Since the station had no navigation aids, there was also no automatic docking. He had to perform it all manually.
The rest that happened that day I’ve already recounted. We got out without incident. Seemingly, no-one noticing.
Back home he helped me get my pilot’s license reinstated. It was a very straightforward procedure in the Federation if you had the necessary qualifications. We just had to pay a fee, and that was it. And the Gallente were more than welcoming of me. The friendliness and gifts I was showered with to get my life back on track exceeded my expectations. And after a couple of days of settling in and sorting out my things, I felt like home. Home was where he would be. It didn’t matter to me whether we would be living in the Federation, or somewhere else. As long as we were together.
This is how I ended up living in the Gallente Federation. It was very different from what I had been used to. The personal liberties available to me suddenly increased severalfold, but so did personal responsibility. I was the ultimate authority over my own life and decisions affecting me. Even though it was a huge change for me, it was not difficult for me to get used to. I welcomed it.
We were free to make a life together. I recognized that was my fate all along. The strongest force in the universe was Love, I found out.
Prologue.
I was lying in his arms one of those days when I was still settling in, and there was one thing I couldn’t get off my mind. The man we left behind. After I had packed my belongings, I went to look for him, even though I knew every second counted. But I couldn’t just leave him there. It took me a while to locate him, almost as if he was hiding from me. I asked him to come with us, but he wouldn’t. I pleaded with him, doing my all trying to convince him, to get it through to him that freedom was right there on that bridge – but he wouldn’t agree to leave with us. He even laughed at me for suggesting it. It seemed to me those seven years of isolation had skewed his perception of reality, because he didn’t seem to quite understand what I was saying. I was at a loss of what to do. On one side I had to go. I did not want to stay there a minute longer and I would have hated to have delayed too long to have us all locked in there should the Caldari military be onto us. On the other side I knew how he felt. Even though my estrangement from the other people and reality hadn’t reached pathological proportions, I had felt it. I knew how he had ended up as antisocial and distrustful as he did.
My man pressed for us to go. I knew we had to, but I still felt bad. I couldn’t stay there just to keep that guy company. I asked him again, but he shook his head and refused to come, keeping himself busy filing some paperwork. So we went, the two of us. We boarded his ship and we left. Never to return there again.
‘‘I’m worried about him’’.
His arms were around me, holding me. And it started to feel like I had hallucinated that station, or had a very long bad dream. It seemed incompatible and surreal with the world I was inhabiting after the fact. The scars left from that experience were slowly being erased, but I knew it had all been real.
He knew who I meant: ‘‘I got the name of his partner’’.
I looked up at him. This part came as a surprise to me. ‘‘At least that’s who I think he is. You might be right about why he was in there’’.
I still didn’t understand so he had to explain further. ‘‘When you were talking to him, I looked around and found a number of his letters in his quarters. I didn’t read them, but I glanced at them enough. They were very intimate. I have the man’s name and his home station. All we have to do is find him. He might be able to convince him to leave’’.