Fractured Beneath the Skin

-Asher’s thoughts

Something isn’t right.

Ashar sat still. Always still. Motionless as the ship drifted into stolen airspace, the sound of low arguments and hissing plasma vents filling the air. His arms were folded, posture deceptively relaxed, but every muscle coiled with precise tension. Her.

He let his gaze slide sideways. No one noticed. No one ever did. Noticing him required his permission. There she was. Small. Shackled. Fragile. Or so it appeared. But no.

No, no, no... something is seriously off. His mind rewound, cold, clinical, back to the auction.

The dagger. Thrown with precision, intent to kill. A fraction slower, a breath off course, and it would have embedded itself in her, killing her. He stopped it. Of course, he stopped it, but he almost didn’t. His hands were phase-tuned, calibrated through thousands of battles to lock onto moving metal. No blade could touch him unless.

Unless. It did. His palm still ached faintly, a razor-thin slice across the edge, a mark that shouldn’t exist. The impact should’ve phased through, his molecular shift placing him between the dagger’s frequency and its edge. Instead.

It cut me. It should not have cut me.

The dagger shattered in his grip, as expected, but not instantly and not before leaving that whisper of pain. His body hadn’t felt pain like that in, gods, how long? Why? His gaze drifted back to her. Mae sat quietly, chin tucked down, pretending to ignore the brewing argument between Kaine and Riven. But he saw the flick of her fingers. The subtle shifts in her breath. Her senses were tracking every word, every micro-movement. And then there was the other thing. The impossible thing. When he phased during the escape, shifting between real-space and the quantum threads to bypass collapsing debris, enemy fire, pulse beams, she kept up.

No. Not entirely. But close enough to matter. When he blinked three meters sideways, dragging reality with him, her head had turned. Followed. Like she could see the fracture path. Even Riven hadn’t noticed. Not Lucien, whose psychic sense usually mapped phase displacement like a child’s puzzle. But she had. No one sees the fracture paths. No one but, Ashar’s fists tightened slightly. The faint crackle of his own energy field answered, a glitch at the edge of his normally perfect control. He bit it down. Smothered it. Forced the tremor into stillness. Maybe the Council was right. Maybe she is a contaminant. Something foreign. Something wrong. Something not meant to exist.

Or worse. Maybe they’re not right enough.

There was no proof yet. Just instinct. Just the memory of bleeding when he shouldn’t have bled. The memory of her gaze trailing his phasing steps like watching a ripple on the surface of a pond. And the way her presence, stretched. Distorted. Warped the air just slightly around her, like light bending around a gravitational fracture. But he would not speak it. Not yet. Speaking it makes it real. And if it was real, then every species, every empire, every broken ruin hanging in the vacuum of space was already too late.Ashar’s crystalline eyes flickered. For a split second, Mae glanced up and caught his gaze.

Just a second. But it was enough. Her pupils shrank. Her breathing hitched. Like her subconscious felt something too. He looked away first. Not because he was weak. But because. Because he wasn’t ready for what looking any longer might confirm.

- Mae

She didn’t know why she was looking at him. Ashar hadn’t moved. Not really. Not in the way people normally shifted or fidgeted or adjusted themselves when trying to seem unreadable. His kind of stillness was, unnatural. As if stillness itself bowed to him. But she felt it. Something, tension under the surface. A fractured line between what he was thinking and what he was willing to show the world. And for some dumb reason... her mouth opened before her brain caught up. “Is... there something wrong with me?”

Her voice wasn’t shaky. It was too flat to be shaky. Calm in a way that wasn’t really calm. He didn’t answer immediately. Didn’t turn his head, didn’t twitch, didn’t shift a single strand of hair. Silence stretched until it almost hurt. She swallowed.

“I mean, if there is. I get it. I mean, maybe I shouldn’t have-” Her eyes flicked toward the others still arguing in the corner. Kaine’s voice was sharp, clipped, half mechanical static, half venom. “Should I apologize to him...?”

The moment the words left her lips, she regretted them. It sounded stupid. Weak. Pointless. But Kaine had tried to kill her, or at least scare her within an inch of it, and somehow, somehow part of her wondered if that was her fault. Maybe I deserve it.

Ashar moved. Finally. Slow. Controlled. One arm unfolded, resting on his knee. He tilted his head just enough to half-face her, the crystalline glow of his eyes catching the dim ship lights. “No.” Just that. No more. His voice was low, not harsh, but not soft either. Absolute. Like gravity deciding what falls and what doesn’t.

She blinked. “No what?”

“No, you shouldn’t apologize.” The knot in her chest didn’t loosen. Not exactly. Her fingers twisted against the restraints still locked around her wrists. The skin there felt raw. Or maybe that was just her imagination. “Okay.” Her voice dipped quieter. “Then, what’s wrong with me?” She hadn’t meant it to come out like that. Not so small. Not so close to breaking. He didn’t flinch. Didn’t breathe. For a second, Mae thought he wouldn’t answer. Wouldn’t even acknowledge the question. But then, “I don’t think... anything is wrong with you.”

It sounded,  wrong. Not a lie. Not the truth either. Something else. Something heavy lodged between the two. She blinked. “Then, what is it?” He paused again. Eyes sharp. Measuring. Not cautious like the others. Not like someone afraid of her. More like someone staring at a riddle that didn’t have a solution written in any language he knew. “I don’t know.” Quiet. Firm. Honest. But empty of answers. The way he said it, so sure, yet distant, hit harder than anything Kaine’s venomous threats had. Mae didn’t cry. She didn’t even flinch. No trembling lips. No glassy eyes. No dramatic collapse.

But something inside her, folded.

Like a fabric stretched too thin. Quietly, silently, her chest felt, hollow. Like there was a hole there no one else could see. Ashar felt it. She knew he did. Knew because his head tilted slightly, just slightly, like he’d caught a frequency no one else in the ship could hear. And without a word, without the smallest sigh or explanation, he shifted, slow, smooth, and sat beside her. Close. Close enough their knees almost touched. Close enough that the wild static of his presence brushed against her skin, though he didn’t lay a hand on her. Didn’t look at her.

Just... sat. In silence. A silence that somehow said everything neither of them could.