There's a Starman

They had been in contact on and off since Hiroki left. It wasn't direct messages but typed things or words, mostly from Allura, to Ziggy from the Atlas. He hated hearing about the war and the devastation. It made him feel heart sick and he did his best to hide the depression that was sneaking in. He finally understood what Tommy meant when he said that living among humans, even on the periphery, caused madness. This was it, right now. The worry and the constant sense of foreboding that started to hang over him as the weeks dragged on. He isolated himself, paced the floors and couldn't concentrate. Every passing hour made it feel worse.

Eventually, Tommy came to him with the same sense eating away at his mind. Tommy and Ziggy were polar opposites, like yin and yang but something they did share was the burden of seeing the future. Nothing was clear for either of them but they sat together in a quiet room under the weight of a creeping doom. They didn't eat or drink for days, nor speak. Then the urge to move came for both of them.

They walked in silence out to the depressions in the ground where the ATLAS had stood before it departed. The two staring into the sky. This was the place that the pain lingered and the foreboding felt the strongest. Nothing was clear. It all felt like a thick, black wall had come down somewhere with some horror behind it but the Antheans could neither see the wall nor what lay behind it. They knew it was there.

Tommy's eyes narrowed at the clouds as he concentrated. “The portal....”

“What portal?” Ziggy came up beside and tried to stare in the same direction. He saw nothing but the doomed feeling was starting to constrict on his heart. “The ATLAS?”

His sense of the future was not as in tune as Tommy. Ziggy was just a baby by comparison with weak legs like a toddler taking his first steps beside a marathon runner with perfect grace. He suddenly gripped onto Tommy's arm so hard that the other Anthean's attention finally came to him and away from the sky.

“It's gone.” He stated with his usual emotionally flat tone. “There's no passage anymore.”

“What do you mean?” Ziggy's voice came out shrill because, despite the fact his mind hadn't caught up, his senses and heart knew exactly what it meant. Knew and wouldn't... refused to believe.

“There's no way for them to return.” Tommy stared at the boy and his pleading eyes but there was nothing he could do. “The Nexus must have shifted or the Witch?... Yes, maybe her.”

An eternity felt like it passed while he stared at Tommy. His insides felt hollow and filled to bursting at the same time. It was a crushing, manic feeling rising up inside of him. “NO!” He screamed it at Tommy, in Anthean and high as his alien voice could go.

The pitch was enough to cause the elder Anthean to shake his head at the jabbing pain it caused his eardrums. The child was going to break again. The little pieces were already coming apart and tumbling away like the tears welling up in his eyes. Tommy did the only thing he could. He called to Tom so he could collect his child. He hadn't been here with the family yet when the young man died but it left Tommy wondering if dead was better or worse than alive but permanently out of reach. He had wondered that enough about his own wife when he was trapped on Earth and he felt like she was dead or had hope she was alive. Sometimes he felt both at the same time. Though Tommy rarely felt anything anymore, in this moment he felt pity for the child clinging to him desperately, still screaming no over and over again.

His eyes turned away when he heard the car. Heard it long before he could see it and sensed the worry on the man driving it. There were no comforting words in this moment, not for anyone in the family. It was a loss and people couldn't be replaced. You couldn't fly off to a new planet and find peace when things were destroyed. That was what made people unique and impossibly dangerous. They could not be substituted or replaced.

Tommy pulled away as Tom came to their side. A human could deal with this more than Tommy could. The emotional connections would be there. Emotions he couldn't convey or share, though inside he felt them like pins in his own heart. Tom gave him a pleading look and all he could do was shake his head. His mind was strong but he didn't have the power to see across the distance without the portal. He couldn't contact them.

Ziggy had collapsed to the ground by now. The gold and red that decorated his face streaked and smudged together. Drips of color hit and spread on the human's pant legs as he cradled the boy in a way he probably hadn't since he was still pouch bound. Eventually, even Tommy was moved by the familial bond and sat down beside them to stroke the child's hair. It was tragic but Tommy knew he would survive.

Tom not only looked helpless but his emotions were in disarray. Worry and panic pulling at him. Tommy could see the images in the human's mind of finding him before, overdosing and trying to die. Antheans were resilient. To see how far loss at pushed him, how close to death he had gone before, was a worthwhile concern.

“We should go home.” Tommy told him plainly. “He and I experienced visions of this place. Staying here will only continue to worsen his condition.”

“He's going to need others if he's to survive.” Antheans had not experienced death until the war, at least not in any memorable sense of time. This was one thing that they learned quickly. When a mate died the other would follow if no one was there. It was true of all bonds, even arranged marriages without love. One would be followed by the other. He wondered why that hadn't happened to him when he saw his wife dead in his visions. It was the only thing that made him question if it was a true vision or some horrible reality his stressed mind had produced. Either way, Ziggy would need support to pull through the loss. The mental bond was there and that would take the longest to heal. He might never stop reaching out for the human's mind, for his mates mind. It might drive him mad searching for it. Tommy found himself falling into an even more chaotic worry than the human had.

Tom nodded and picked Ziggy up. He walked away without a word. The human knew that Tommy would prefer to walk.

Walk he did. Tommy came to the house an hour after the incident and there was a wall of despair around the place. It felt like digging through damp soil to enter the house. Once the glass door opened the Anthean wailing hit his ears. The high death knell of their pain that was so rarely heard. Tommy had cried one out when he missed his people and found himself losing his mind. The unbearable loneliness. Each shriek seemed to be louder than the last. There was nothing to be done. He would have to exhaust himself and might wake to start this all over again.

He didn't head into the back room where the screams of pain emanated. Tom and Aletayria were already by his side. None of them were going to be the right one to end the cries. They would all have to wait. Tommy instead went to Ziggy's pinpoint and sent out messages to those closest to the child. Maybe one of them could bring the pain under control, maybe all of them together? Tommy couldn't be sure but his own senses were already fraying under the onslaught. All he could do was sit on the chair in the living room and stare blankly at the outside while the sounds rolled over him like tidal waves.