Chapter Two: Siblings

Packing her neatly rolled uniform into the large canvas duffle, Jahenna folded the bag closed and firmly tightened the string clasp. She looked around the barracks room she’d spent the last six months in, and allowed herself a brief moment of farewell. 

She’d changed so much here… 

Between the rows of bunks so awkwardly far away from the windows and cabinets that served as both divider and wardrobe for each bunk “bay,” it was not a place she wanted to stay in anymore…

…but after being called “home” for half a year, she couldn’t leave without at least saying goodbye to it. It felt silly, but it also felt right. 

That was just the way she was. 

With her hand faintly running along the bare mattress on the bottom bunk, she scooped up the canvas duffle by its handle, and slung the strap over her right shoulder.  “So long, Bay Twenty-Two,” she mumbled, giving one last glance over her little corner of hell. 

“And may I never see you again.”

Duffel over her shoulder, Jahenna maneuvered out of the barracks and into the open sunlight of an afternoon Proxima sun. 

She wore the best approximation of civilian clothing she could find at the PX: an athletic slate gray shirt branded “Espatier Corps,” with the Sword and Sextant emblem on the front, and a pair of black shorts. It wasn’t what she’d normally wear, but it would do the job while she traveled. 

For the next three hundred, thirty-six hours, she was on liberty; a vacation. It was a chance to seriously recover from all of the hell and torment from Espatier training, and a chance to heal wounds that had only been bandaged and patched up rather than allowed to fully mend. 

For two whole standard weeks, she could go where she pleased, wearing what she wanted, while eating whatever she liked…after that, it was on to Bar-Hassan Station, where she’d begin the next phase of her training: Light Orbital Mechanized Infantry Training, or “LOMIT school,” as everyone called it. 

Back to uniforms and a rote hierarchal organization. 

Back to stale air and bland food. 

Back…to the Espatiers. 

She’d endure being a soldier; she’d live the life and the experience, and be better for it, she had decided…but she also recognized how it would change her. Had changed her. She was a different person now than she was six months ago, and although she still had the same sense of wonder and curiosity about the alien ruins and fossils here on Proxima Prime, everything seemed so…distant now. 

This wasn’t what she wanted to do. 

Yet, here she was doing it anyway. 

The ends never justify the means, as the saying went.

It was going to be a long bus ride to the small hamlet she was spending her liberty. Harrow’s Landing may have been nothing more than a town with a beach, but it was also only an hour away; if she was going to be spending the majority of the next six years stuck aboard ships or trapped on a space station, she wanted to soak up as much sunlight and open sky as she could.

She was halfway to the Recruitment Depot’s transport station when a semi-familiar voice called out to her from behind: “Jahenna? Is that you?”

She turned to look, then nearly fell backwards.

Rence Malnix, her older brother, walked briskly to catch up her from behind. He wore a crisp white button-down shirt with an open collar, and wore dark, pressed slacks with shined shoes. His dark brown hair was still styled into spikes with frosted blonde tips, and his skin looked somehow more uncomfortably pale than she remembered him. 

“Rence?” She asked, surprised. “Is that…you?”

“In the flesh,” he said with a grin, holding his arms out. 

Jahenna dropped her duffel softly to the ground and gave her brother an unexpected, pre-programmed sisterly hug. 

“I…I didn’t…you…but…”

“I wanted to surprise you!” He said, embracing her as she stammered. 

“But…you didn’t…!” She protested. “I didn’t know you were coming!” 

“Because I wanted to surprise you,” he repeated. “Are you okay?”

“…n—no!” She said, despite the smile forming on her face, and the fire went out of Rence’s eyes. “I’m…I didn’t get any return mail! From either of you!” 

“I know,” he said meekly. “I just…I didn’t have time to write back.”

“…what were you doing?” She asked, the hurt making her feel bitter. “Were you trying to get Dad to sign on to some new investment plan for the building commission?” 

“Jahenna—”

“Do you know what I went through?” She asked, her voice sharp and pointed. “Do you have any idea about the things I’ve done? The things I had to do? Do you understand how hard it was? And to do all of that…alone? Without any support from what little family I actually have—or had? Do you have any idea how hard it was for me?”

Rence looked at her silently, but she could see his eyes working desperately trying to find something—anything—to say to her.

Absolutely pathetic. 

“Now you tell me you couldn’t find time to write—not even dictate—a single letterback to me?!” She asked. “After I did that for you while you finished your BA coursework on Kasper?!”

Rence’s eyes were hard now. Hard and morose. “I made a mistake—”

“Don’t you dare,” she snapped furiously, stepping back. “Don’t you dare try to tell me you made a mistake and expect to get out of this like Dad—and God help you if you’re like Dad and thought I was just off playing a stupid game.”

He held his hands up defensively at that. 

“Wait!” He protested sharply, “wait a second, I do not think you did this for…for attention or for fun or for anything like that—”

“Then what?” She asked, razor wire in her throat. “What made you so damn busy you couldn’t even spare five minutes for me? Were you dying? Were you sick? Because thats what I’m expecting to hear, and if it’s not, it better be a damn good reason why it’s neither of those things.”

“I was traveling,” he said. “I’m a shit for not being better about it, but I was traveling for the bank.”

Jahenna scoffed.

“I’ve been to Proxima, Kentarus, Sol, Bonfils, and back again over the past four months,” he pleaded.

“Not my problem,” she said, shaking her head and stepping further backward to where her duffel lay on the ground. 

“I fucked up,” he said, louder this time. “I admit it. I fucked up. I really fucked up, and I know it. I had the entirety of my travel time to write you, the downtime between meetings and prep work to write you, the loading time, the transit time—even the freaking calibration time to write you back…and I just didn’t. And the only excuse I have is that I just kept putting it off because your training cycle was just so bloody long…”

Jahenna saw a tear roll silently out of one of his eyes, tracing a clear saline road down the faint stubble of his cheek. 

“I wanted to write back to you, Jahenna, honest to God I did; I just fucked it up. I kept putting it off and off and off…until one day I looked at the calendar and saw we were already at your graduation date. I made a mistake, and…and rather than just admit it or call myself out with it, I—

“Rence,” Jahenna interrupted as she clenched her fist at her side, “if the next words out of your mouth are not ‘I’m sorry,’ and ‘I promise not to fuck up like this again,’ I will never speak another kind word to you for as long as you are alive. Do you understand?”

He stood there frozen, his eyes blinking tears that dribbled down his cheeks in the hot Proxima sun, absolutely unsure how to process what she’d said. Was it a threat? Was it a warning? A promise? 

Did Jahenna herself even know? 

“I’m sorry,” her brother said after what seemed like an eternity. “I promise not to fuck up like this again—or ever again, for that matter.”

The world around them continued on as if they were in a bubble of their own making; a private, shared universe of hidden trauma and sub-surface abuse that stretched as far as the horizon, and ended to where the sky began. The lawn around the walkway they stood on blew lazily in the breeze, and trees swayed in the distance. 

“Are you actually sorry?” She asked. “Do you know how much this hurt?”

“…yes,” he said. “Yes, I do. I’m sorry I wasn’t there when you needed me. I’m here now, but that doesn’t excuse what I did—I need you to understand that. I need you to; I’m not like Dad. I—” 

He stopped himself before he started to ramble much further—another trait of their father’s, one he had always been especially prone to when he was nervous.

“I’m sorry,” he repeated. “I really am.” 

He forced a smile at her, one laden with apologetic appreciation and acceptance.  

“Congratulations on your achievement,” he said, then turned to leave. 

Watching him turn to go after hearing him confess, Jahenna felt something shift inside her. She was still angry—pissed was the better word to describe what she felt—but for as much as she wanted to make him suffer, for as glad as she was to see him feel the hurt and remorse over what he’d done…it felt wrong. 

It was wrong. 

It was just like the barracks bay earlier.

That’s just how she was. 

Rence may be an idiot, but you know he didn’t do this on purpose, she heard herself think. He was trying to make it right by showing up unannounced; he knows messed up, and he was trying to both fix it and apologize. He still wants to fix it. He knows he made the mistake, he knows how much it hurt, and he’s not trying to fix it to benefit himself; he’s not like Dad. 

With a sigh, Jahenna relaxed her clenched fist. 

“Rence,” she called out softly. 

He didn’t turn around as he continued to walk away. 

“Rence!” She said louder.

“No,” he called out to her flatly from behind, “I’ve done enough harm today. I’m sorry I hurt you, but I’m leaving before I find another way to make things worse.”

“Then don’t leave,” she said. “You may have fucked up, but in the end you still made the time to show up. That counts for something—don’t throw that away too by leaving.”

That stopped him in his tracks, and he tentatively turned around to look at her. 

“I’d like to try again,” she continued, looking at his hopeful, teary eyes. “Besides, it’s…it’s good to see you.”

They stood silently for a moment in the middle of the battalion quad, each staring at the other under the hot sun, waiting for the other to react. 

“You…really mean that?” Rence asked. 

Jahenna flew herself at her brother, wrapping him in her arms as she cried.

“You asshole,” she sobbed. “You fucking stupid asshole…God I missed you.”

“I…missed you too, sis,” he said faintly, more confused than he probably intended to sound. He wrapped his own arms around her, and the two held each other as they both processed their grief. 

It was minutes before they finally released each other, Jahenna’s face red and swollen with tears, and Rence’s with a pained and guilty look in his eyes. 

“I…I made it,” she said wistfully, trying to change the subject to a happier one. “I’m an Espatier, now. I did it.”

“I always knew you could,” he said. “Even if I never said it, I knew you could do it. I’m proud of you, ‘Jenna.”

“Thanks,” she said. “Hey um…how much time do you have? Before you have to go, I mean.” 

“As far as the bank is concerned, I’m on some well-earned PTO,” he said. “I was…well, hoping I could spend some of it with you before you move on to the next leg of your training.”

Jahenna smiled. “I’d like that, actually,” she said. “I was…I have a small cottage booked out by Harrow’s Landing for the next two standard weeks,” she explained. “I was planning on just relaxing before LOMIT school, but I’m sure you could come with me if you wanted; I’m pretty sure I can amend the booking and—”

“What if,” he offered instead, “instead of Harrow’s Landing, we went camping?”

She looked at her brother with questioning eyes. 

“Camping?”

“Yeah,” he said, the charisma coming back into his voice. “Do you remember? Like when we were kids?”

“…vaguely,” she answered. 

“Dad was always running off to some nearby fault line,” Rence said, still trying to sell the idea, “Mom was always off by the creek…it was just us, tear-assing through the campsite, living in the sun and trees. Do you remember any of that?”

“…yeah,” she said, the memories coming back slowly. “Actually, yeah I do remember. I was…little, though. I haven’t thought about that in forever.”

“Look,” he said, “this is your vacation. You’ve earned it. I’d love to spend some time with you if you’ll have me, but you pick: Harrows Landing, a quiet little beach hamlet—which is also in its off-season right now, so mostly everything is closed up…or camping, something you haven’t thought of doing since…what, since Mom died?”

“Just about,” Jahenna said. “Maybe I just want something simple. Maybe I don’t care that most of everything is closed up because it’s the off-season; it’s cheap and there aren’t any obnoxious tourists to deal with. Maybe I just want to curl up on a lounge with an ocean view, a drink, and a good book—that thought ever occur to you?” 

“Well…yes,” Rence admitted, “but consider this: you can easily curl up in a lounge, with a simulated ocean view, sip a drink and read a good book on deployment…but you can’t do any of that with your brother.” 

“You could just come with me,” she repeated. “It’s really alright. 

“Yeah, but…c’mon,” he said. “It’ll be fun! S’mores? Cookouts? Hikes? You can show me all sorts of cool Espatier survival tricks, I bet!” 

Jahenna shook her head and groaned. 

“I’ve been cooped up in a ship cabin for far, far too long,” Rence said. “I need to hear the wind through the trees again and feel the sun on my face. I’ll go with you to the beach if you really, really want to, but take it from someone who’s been hugging light for the past few months: you can simulate a beachfront easier than a forest.”

She opened her mouth to say something, then stopped herself. He had a point, as much as she hated to admit it. 

“Another thing to consider,” Rence continued, “is that camping might be good for us. Ever since I finished my BA and got that bank job, we’ve fallen out of touch…and I really screwed up not writing to you.”

“You really did,” she said, thinking. “Ohh…fine, you convinced me.”

“Convinced you?”  

“Let’s go camping,” she said. “As long as I can sleep under the stars.” 

“If you want to wake up to bug bites,” Rence said, “I won’t stop you.”

She smiled as she finally moved back to her duffel and picked it up. “I just need to cancel my booking,” she said, opening the canvas top and reaching inside for her tablet. 

“We can do it from my rental,” he said. “C’mon. It’s hot and I’m parked not too far from here.” 

Jahenna looked at him, then back out to where he pointed. 

“Well, lead on then,” she said, closing the duffel and hoisting it back over her shoulder. 

She grunted as the weight settled onto her shoulder again, but held steady as she began walking back to where her brother stood waiting.