“I don’t know what to say, Zedock—uh, Dad—um…”

“I don’t expect you to know what to say, son. Hell, I don’t know what to say neither. I just wanted you to hear the truth, and now you have. Nothing has to change between us. We can just take it one day at a time, and see how it all shakes out.”

Letho said nothing, just stared deep into rheumy old eyes that he now realized looked a lot like his, in shape and size. Also the way that Zedock moved, breathed, carried himself. How had he not seen it before?

“I can’t believe you’re my father. This is just unreal.”

“Well, I swear by the good book and all. I am sure the doc could whip up a paternity test if you want.”

“Nah, that’s okay. I guess if you’re my dad I pretty much have to trust you.”

“Damn right.”

The two embraced, a son and father who had been torn apart by a rift in the fabric of space and time, now reunited. Tears were shed, and after a moment Letho felt his back growing sore from the firm pats that Zedock gave him as if to ensure that the embrace remained masculine. They broke the embrace, and Zedock place a hand on Letho’s cheek.

“Might want to trim that scruff—you look like homeless man,” Zedock said, laughing.

“What, and just leave the mustache? Not quite ready for that look,” Letho said.

“Fair enough. Hey, why don’t you let me get a look at that arm?”

Pain upon remembrance. Letho resisted an urge to recoil, to hide his mangled arm. But he allowed Zedock to peel back the torn fabric of his jumpsuit. Zedock pulled a folding knife from a sheath on his belt, and Letho flinched a little at the sight of it.

“Easy there, hoss. I’m just going to cut some of this fabric so I can get a better look.”

“Okay,” Letho said, a little embarrassed by his own reaction. “I’m usually much more macho. You know, it’s just, the whole losing an arm thing has me a little jumpy.”

Zedock said nothing, his eyes fixed on what remained of Letho’s arm. After a moment he sucked air through his teeth, whistling in apprehension or appreciation, Letho couldn’t tell which.

“Looks bad, right?” Letho said through a grimace.

“Actually, no. It looks as pure and clean as a baby’s bottom.”

“What?” Letho turned to look, expecting to see mangled flesh and ragged tendon barely clinging to bare bone. But sure enough, the wound was much further along than it should have been, and to Letho’s shock, but not complete surprise, he seemed to have regained a little of the tissue below his elbow joint. It ended in a wrinkled bulb of flesh that had five small globes attached to it in the familiar orientation of human digits.

“In fact, looks like it might be growing back,” Zedock said.

“Wow, that’s amazing,” Letho said.

“Tell me about it. Is there anything you can’t do, Letho Ferron?”

“Well, I can’t seem to take care of the people I care about,” Letho said. “All those people we went to save, they died. I couldn’t save them, Zedock.”

“That’s a damn hard pill to swallow, son. But consider this: no one else on the whole station had half the sack to pull what you pulled. The important thing is that you stuck up for what you believed in. You faced up to your fears, anted up, and threw in. No one else did. You didn’t see anyone else loading up a freighter to join you, did you?”

“No, sir, I suppose I didn’t.”

“Well, maybe those folks weren’t meant to be saved, Letho. You ever think of that? Maybe there’s a plan. Maybe Je-Ha…” But Letho cut him off with a raised hand.

“I’m all full up on divine plans these days, Zedock.”

“Fair enough, son. Fair enough.”

“Anyways, if it was all part of his plan, it means that he brought a very bad guy back into the world, and used those people to do it.”

“Well, I don’t quite see it that way,” Zedock said through a sigh. “But Abraxas is a very bad guy indeed. You saw him?”

“No, I never actually saw him, or Alastor. But Thresha did. She’s the one that told me they murdered all those Fulcrum citizens. Some kind of ritual to bring him back from the dead.”

Letho felt his nails digging into his own palm as he remembered. Zedock placed a hand on Letho’s shoulder.

They stayed like that for a bit, and then Letho was overcome by a yawn big enough that it threatened to split his head sideways. He suddenly realized how tired he was. How much the day had worn him down. His eyes became heavy, and Zedock’s voice became a little fuzzy, hard to keep up with. Letho felt like he was saying something about crossing a bridge when they came to it, but he couldn’t be certain.

Brain is occupied. Currently not accepting metaphors.

“Anyways,” Zedock said, “I think that’s enough heavy talk for one night. We’ll have more time to catch up later. What do you say we hit the sack?”

“Sounds good. See you in the morning?”

“Right,” Zedock said, clapping his hands on his thighs as he sprang up from his chair. “There’s soap and towels in the head down the hallway. I put a few clean suits in that dresser over there for you. I had to guess on your size.”

“Gee, thanks, Pops,” Letho said.

Zedock paused in the doorway long enough to offer Letho a rather crass two-fingered gesture. Letho didn’t think it a very polite way for a father to address his son, but they both laughed.

“See you in the morning,” Letho said.

Zedock smiled and turned to leave Letho’s new domicile. As he walked out, the light caught his face just right, and Letho could see new tears glistening on his cheeks.

****

That night, several floors below the place where Zedock’s revelation had rocked Letho to his very core, Bayorn the Elder was reeling from a revelation of his own. He sat with the Tarsi of Haven, many of whom he recognized from the Centennial Fulcrum, while others were strangers to him. He was disappointed to learn that there were no other Elders in this new, commingled Tarsi community, as he had been eager to speak to the others, to learn if they too were experiencing visions.

From the moment that he had been christened by Fintran with a singular but monumental kiss on his forehead, strange images and signs had begun to fill his mind. Some of these visions were glimpses of a future that filled him with hope: potential futures in which the plague of the Mendraga had been exterminated and life had begun to flourish, free from the ruining hand of Abraxas. But in other visions, Abraxas triumphed. These visions tormented Bayorn, as he saw Zedock, Maka, his friends, even himself, dying one by one in public executions, their bodies drawn and quartered atop the landing in front of Abraxas’s palace in the heart of Hastrom City. He could see their heads, eyes vacant, tongues lolling as they were placed on pikes that jutted from the walls around the city center. The worst punishments were always saved for Letho, the savior who would be, he whose body could not be killed. The ways in which they tortured his flesh would plague Bayorn for all of his days, whether or not the visions ever came to be true.

Bayorn worried for his friend. He didn’t like the dark shadows that the young Eursan had been casting on whatever crossed his path. He saw a rising tide of hatred that had not been there when he had first met the boy. Bayorn tried to remember the first inkling of this worrying blackness he had seen growing in Letho. Was it the gleeful way he had butchered the Mendraga on Alastor’s ship? No, many had shed the sour blood of the Mendraga that day, and even the most gentle of souls would likely agree that those who had murdered so many innocent Fulcrum citizens deserved whatever fate had befallen them.

Perhaps it was the way Letho had executed the mutated creature at the crash site. It wasn’t just that he had killed the creature, for surely that had been necessary. It had been the way in which he had done it: taking his time, seeming to inflict non-fatal wounds purely out of spite or cruelty. Bayorn shuddered. One shouldn’t torture such a base creature. There was no exacting retribution on something that couldn’t even grasp the concept, a beast merely acting upon its nature.