Escaping Relativity

Xander hadn’t left the deck. He couldn’t. Rolara had brought food, Lennie had asked for some lessons with a phaser, and even Charlie had come to get him to lay down with her and rest for a while. But he couldn’t. It was too dangerous. All of it. He didn’t like any of it.

Xander had thought he could pick up The Time Keeper, exchange her for his brother, then be done with it. Wrong. He couldn’t have been more wrong. Every scenario he ran ended with someone he cared about dead or worse.

He was going to have to tell Charlie to stop this insanity.

Leaving the deck he walked the halls he’d walked a thousand times. Yet this time, food was cooking in the galley, making the whole area smell like a home. Lennie was laughing and Charlie, well, Charlie was training.

Among his artifacts, was a large tubular bag filled with sand of some kind. He’d not yet done the research to understand what it was used for, but watching Charlie now, he could easily understand.

She stood to one side of the tubular bag, now hung from the ceiling, wrappings around her hands and sweat dripping down her face and body. She’d been working feverishly to hurt the heavy bag. Why would anyone want to beat a bag?

“What are you doing?” Xander asked.

“I needed a sparing partner, but this works,” Charlie didn’t even look at him.

“Why?”

“I’ve got to get ready. If you won’t go after Brick, then I will. I’ve got Lennie working on the right coordinates, and I’ll go get him out,” Charlie said.

“Like hell you will!”

“What? Are you going to stop me, Mister big bad, scary Tracker man? Whatever, spin your bull somewhere else, cause I’ve got work to do,” Charlie refused to even look at him.

“He’s not your brother!” Xander moved in, blocking her punch to the seemingly innocent bag.

“He’d be better off if he was!” Charlie yelled back, trying to hit him again.

“You don’t know what you’re talking about, you don’t know what’s happened!”

“I don’t give a shit about what’s happened, I don’t care if he wants to be there, I don’t care if he purposely left you...” Charlie’s words died down at the expression on his face.

“Well he did, good job, Charlie, you should get an award.”

“What happened?” Charlie asked, stopping suddenly to meekly mess with the frays of the wraps around her hands.

“Our parents died, he was in Academy, and I took him out to come Track with me. He thought he was ready to go out alone, he even landed a job for The Dilligara. I knew he wasn’t ready, we had a huge fight, and he took off. That was the last I heard of him. I’d been trying to keep tabs on him, but eventually he disappeared. Apparently it was to their own prisons. Then they figured out he was my brother, and they called me to find you. I don’t know if he even wants me to come get him. What if he’s working with them, and I hand you over? There are a million scenarios and they all end badly.”

“Look, all I know is if I had a second chance to save my sister, I would have given everything I owned to do it. If you don’t at least try, you’ll regret it for the rest of your life; and I have to tell you, I’ll be damned if every morning for the rest of my life I wake up to you brooding over your brother,” Charlie said, punching him lightly in the arm.

“Brooding, I don’t brood,” Xander said. Suddenly, her meaning caught, and the breath stopped in his lungs and he swore his heart stopped beating. He was suddenly nauseated and starving at the same time. Was she serious? Would she really stay?

Grabbing her faster than she could move, he pulled Charlie against him, breathing in the scent of her; sweat and heat, and everything that was simply her.

“You’ll stay?”

“Are you asking me to stay?”

“I’m telling you I want you to.”

“I’ll stay, after we get your brother. If he decides he wants to go back, then fine, he goes back, but let’s give him the chance to make the call. Okay?”

There was no greater joy in the galaxy than the one overtaking him in that moment.

“Agreed,” Xander said.