Blazing yellow and white flames cloaked the main viewport and burned brighter as they were drawn closer and closer to Vaanu’s surface by gravity. Scorching heat radiated through the air inside the bridge onto Pandora’s skin. She couldn’t determine if the heat she felt came from the reentry fire outside or from Hale.

Sweat dripped from Hale’s brow. He clenched his jaw so tightly it was visible. The veins in his hands and arms protruded from underneath his skin more than she had ever witnessed. He held a death grip on the steering yoke while wrenching it in irregular directions. But his steering seemed to have little if any effect on the ship as a whole.

As she watched Hale stare at the terrifying scene below, she discovered... fear... in his blue eyes, which was something she had never yet witnessed from him. Oftentimes, she had wondered if he could fear, but it was evident her assumption had been wrong. He did have fears.

This incoming crash must have been bringing back gruesome memories of the death of his family back to his mind. What else would make a man like Hale tremble so? She wished she could embrace him and comfort him because she wasn’t sure how long she could bear to see him in this state.

But she couldn’t hold him. She couldn’t distract him. He was his own and her only chance of survival. In the midst of his fear, she could see his determination to survive when most would give up.

“Look, I’m going to need you... to trust me,” he strained between his teeth.

He pulled back several levers on the control board, and almost instantly the ship was semi-stabilized. The nauseating spinning slowed to turns, and the approach to the surface eased.

“Whatever you need, Hale.”

Hale drew the control yoke to him and locked it in that position. “I extended all the drag fins. Should buy me some time.”

She heard the click of his seatbelt unbuckling. When she looked up, Hale stood over her and leaned down close to her. His blue eyes flickered for a brief moment when he met her gaze. He quickly looked away, although he lowered his body even closer, leaving her somewhat dazed.

Until she heard the same click and felt her seatbelt slide upwards across her chest.

But she began to tremble harder as she felt a warm hand underneath her knees and along her back. Then, gently and firmly, he picked her up out of the seat and held her close to him and dashed out of the bridge, down the hallway.

He screeched to a halt at the end of the hallway and lowered himself to his knees. “I’m placing you inside a safe compartment. You’ll have the best chance to survive here.” Hale carefully slid her inside the compartment. “Now strap in. This box will automatically open after I close it in twenty minutes.”

“What about you?”

He moved his hand to the compartment door. “Someone has to pilot the ship.”

“No!” she shouted. “I’m not going to let you die for me.”

He shook his head with a slight grin. “If you survive, maybe you can heal me,” he teased.

“Hale!” She tried to push herself out the compartment, but Hale held her back. “No!”

“I’m a good pilot.” He swung the tiny door shut and sealed it with a lock.

She crawled forwards in the dimly lit space and used all her strength to push against the door. But she found no way to open it from the inside. Defeated, she fell back and strapped herself in as Hale had instructed.

Bitter tears streamed from her eyes. Sacrifice wasn’t what she wanted. She couldn’t know if she would be able to revive him in time. The compartment only opened after a long, dreadful twenty minutes.

And the crash was less than a minute away.

Hale couldn’t hold on that long. Not if he were in a critical state.

But why was she so afraid to lose him? He wasn’t family. He wasn’t a friend: he had made sure to mention that a while back.

Did her heart grow so attached so quickly by just spending time with someone?

Her fear of losing him stemmed from something far beyond physical attraction. She sensed a strength within him from the very beginning that she had never felt in anyone else. And she was waiting and... hoping for the day that he would use it for others instead of himself. She found that difficult to wait for because she saw his potential.

But the wait might not be as long as she initially thought. Because, he had placed her in the safest part of the ship, an action completely pure, unselfish.

He might die from that action. A sacrifice.

She couldn’t stop him.

* * * *

As if he were having a vision, he could see everything that would occur during the next minute in less than a single moment. But he what he saw wasn’t a vision.

It was a memory, one which he had absolutely no desire to relive, but his mind wasn’t giving him another option. He had to face this memory with his eyes wide open, literally, where each detail could burn through his mind all over again.

Only this time, he wasn’t going to be the one to survive this crash. He assumed. Unless he could get this ship to slow down further and somehow veer towards the ocean in view.

The current path of the ship, hurtling towards the sandy edge of the main island on Vaanu, was one of an almost certain death for him.

He extended the drag fins out to their maximum extent and then grabbed the steering yoke. With one wing gone, the ship wanted to spiral uncontrollably. But extending the drag fins slowed the spiraling and gave him a very limited ability to steer. Of course, anything was better than nothing, when it came to steering.

Hale locked the yoke completely over to the left to guide the ship away from the sand and towards the water. The amount of which he was able to move to the left was a tenth of the velocity in which he moved forwards to the surface.

The beauty of this world was wasted on his eyes.

Though he could see the sparkling teal waters and the white beach sand, his mind registered them as nothing more than a body of water and sand, nothing more than features of the land. And he was partially disgusted by them, knowing that this would likely be the last image his eyes would see.

However, the last image his mind would see was something different altogether.

Although the memory of his parents was very much alive in his thoughts, all of his fears were centered on one person. One woman. And he was aware that he had broken his one rule for her.

Trey was right.

He was attached to Pandora. But it was more than that.

Still he wasn’t ready to accept what he felt for her. And he wasn’t yet confident that it was anything more than physical attachment.

But if it were only attachment in the physical sense, he wouldn’t be thinking of her in his last moments as he was now. His feelings were more unnerving than the death he saw before him.

By his estimation, the impact was less than a minute away, and he hung right between the sand and the ocean. He had no way to determine which side would be his destination, potentially final. The water would allow him a better chance of survival, except for the danger of drowning. That wasn’t the way he wanted to go out. That was a more pleasant death than he deserved.

Hale closed his eyes. He didn’t want the last image he saw to be of sand or water. He wanted it to be of her violet eyes and a perfect smile.

He kept his eyes closed, as the ship fell into the surface of the planet, as the ship crumbled into itself and enfolded Hale’s body within its steel walls.

The image of her had faded in his mind, and he no longer felt pain, external nor internal. And he welcomed the absence of feeling.

His memory drifted to the past:

“You’re going to take care of Hale, right, Trey?”

Hale looked up at the beautiful face of his mother, and he saw dread within her sad smile.

Hale turned to see Trey, eight years old, here, who nodded in response to his mother.

“Good,” she sniffled, wiping her tears before they left her eyes. “Now go into the compartment, my boys.”

On his hands and knees, Hale crawled into the compartment behind Trey, who had went in first. Trey pushed Hale against the wall and secured him with the safety belt. Trey then sat beside Hale and strapped himself in.

“I love you,” their mom told them while she checked their harnesses. “See you in a little bit.”

The way she said that, Hale doubted that were true, and he waved goodbye instinctively.

She sealed the compartment door shut. Even then, he knew that would be the goodbye forever. Somehow he knew.

With the door shut, the darkness was trapped inside with them. And at that time darkness was entirely foreign to him and frightening. He hugged his knees and hid his face.

Trey placing his arm around Hale. That was enough to drive Hale’s fear away. He still kept his eyes closed, but he no longer was afraid because he no longer felt alone.

Then another force, cold and jarring, surged through the compartment through him, pinning him against the wall. Thundering rumbles and metallic grinding echoed all around.

Though he was still held up against the wall, he perceived less and less pressure as the seconds passed by. Until everything normalized and then he fell from the wall.

“Trey, what was that?”

Trey reached for and gripped Hale’s hand. “I don’t know. Be quiet.”

He sat there next to Trey. He couldn’t gauge how long the darkness surrounded him. It could have been a moment or an entire day. Maybe more. Time was irrelevant to a child.

Fear of the darkness creeped up in his spine and grew the longer they remained within it. He waited for the light.

And with a gentle touch, light brushed his eyelids. He opened his eyes to find the compartment door wide open. He looked over to Trey, who had unbuckled himself and moved to help Hale with his.

“What’s going on?” Hale asked.

Trey shrugged.

Once Hale was free, he followed Trey towards the light and out of the compartment. Hale held his hand over his eyes; the sunlight beamed down upon them. Through squinted eyes, he saw everything that had happened and looked for what he had lost. The ship was split in half, and the front end was smashed into the ground.

Hale rushed to what was left of the bridge, stopping immediately when he heard a soft splash. He looked down at his feet, finding himself standing in a pool of blood.

“Trey?” he whimpered.

Cautiously, Trey approached Hale. “Is that your blood?”

Hale shook his head.

Trey’s eyes overflowed with tears.

“Where’s Mom and Dad?” Hale asked.

Erupting with sobs, Trey waded through the rubble to where the blood streamed from. He began lifting some pieces of glass and metal off the pile.

Hale went to help him, and within the next fifteen minutes they uncovered a scene... one which children should never witness.

Their mother... their father... mangled by debris from the ship. Shards of various materials impaled their bodies. And they bled from each wound.

Hale sobbed too and moved towards the dead bodies. But Trey held him back.

“You’ll get cut, Hale!” Trey took Hale in his arms.

“They need help!” Hale screamed, fighting to escape. He couldn’t continue to watch the blood gurgling from the bodies of the two people he loved most in the galaxy.

But they were helpless to save them. They were already gone.

Hale gasped harshly for air. His chest rose and fell from his heavy breaths and pulsed against a cold surface on top of him. He opened his eyes but saw deep shadows, except a stream of light beaming from the far right.

Hale slowed his breathing and brought his hands to the surface covering him. It had a rough, crumpled texture, and his sliced fingertips revealed certain parts of it were quite sharp. He tried to twist free from his seat, but he was pinned down. He placed his hands on the dull parts of the surface he could find and began to push upwards.

Almost immediately, he had to let go, experiencing near-paralyzing pain spike through his left arm. Once the pain had dulled, he pushed on the object again, more carefully. But this still revived the pain, and he groaned in agony.

He craned his neck to the side to look at his left arm, but the shadows had concealed even his own body from his eyes.

He snarled. He had to lift whatever was on him regardless of the pain. He had to get to Pandora.

His left arm was weak and mostly useless. So he decided not to move it this time, not desiring to damage his arm further.

His right arm was his dominant arm, thankfully, and was naturally stronger. Once more, he held his arm up against the crumbled surface and exerted enough force to form a dent in what he thought was metal. He lifted the right side of his upper body, including his head, to push against the metal.

Every muscle in his arm, shoulder, chest were burning intensely from his straining; even his abs ached. And he could feel edges of the metal cutting into his skin.

After creating a deep indention, the surface finally gave way, and he had enough room to slide off the chair and crawl towards the light. He crawled away from the front end of the bridge to the back. There, he could almost stand up. As he staggered down the hallway floor covered in sharp debris, not once did he consider the damage his ship had sustained, that it now could only be used for scraps. Pandora was all he worried for.

A level terror he had only experience once before rose in his heart and intensified his fears. When he reached the compartment, he fell to his knees and unlocked the door. He brought a flare of fire to his right hand so that he could see inside the dark compartment.

His heart tightened achingly.

Pandora’s head hung forwards. He scrambled inside and sat down beside her. He lifted left arm, in spite of the stiffness and burning aches, and brought two of his fingers to her neck.

When he felt her strong pulse, his heart unclenched. He clasped one of her hands in his, waiting for her to wake. He stared at her small hand and delicate fingers to admire them.

She tapped her fingers playfully on his palm.

His eyes darted up to her face, and she greeted him with adoring eyes. He was so relieved and thankful that she was now awake and unharmed that tears beaded in the corners of his eyes, although he refused to let them fall.

She stroked his jaw with her soft hand. “You’re alive.”

He watched her lips form the words and desperately wished he could hold her close to him so that he could finally taste the kiss that had been in every fantasy from the moment he first saw her. Of course, with much reluctance, he couldn’t permit himself to fall that deeply.

And he wasn’t sure he was what she desired.