Author’s Note: While on the one hand, he’s getting better at these things, he still manages to miss the point. A lot.

“Are you mad at me?”

Luna looked up with a frown. “I thought you went off in search of a lesson or something.”

“I didn’t go far. I didn’t want to go without you, and I was worried about you. I suppose I should have been. You didn’t come out of the store yesterday. Not once.”

She lowered her head, letting it rest on her knees. Her hair was not tipped in black, but it was close, a dark blue that could have been mistaken for black in a different light. He did not like it. He had hurt her too much—she might even have gone back to the medication and doubting that he was real, and all because he couldn’t stop talking about losing her.

He could have lost her by talking about losing her. He felt rather stupid, hating himself for letting that fear dominate their conversation and ruin what they’d had. “Luna?”

“I had a bad night, that’s all. I don’t want to talk about it.”

He knelt down, trying to see her face. “It is my fault, isn’t it?”

“No, it’s not. Not all of it. I just… I haven’t managed to stand up to my father about anything, and I don’t like that any more than I like how you won’t listen to me. He kept saying that I shouldn’t talk to you or let you in the store, that I had to give you back your robot—Alvin—and should move on with my life. I’m not really sure what he thinks moving on would be—this store is my job and my inheritance, and I haven’t done much painting since Mom died… And it’s not like there’s a family or anything in the cards for me, but I know he’s got it in his head that there should be grandchildren.”

“This is… out of a need for something to care for?”

She shrugged. “I don’t want to think about my father’s reasons for anything.”

“What do you think of the wizard’s reasons? Do you think he is like the one in the movie, the original book, or that retelling and musical?”

She laughed. “You went looking for a lesson in The Wizard of Oz?”

“Yes.”

“I suppose you missed the point of the Tin Man.”

“I think they were too easily pacified by his lies at the end, yes.”

She sighed. “I think you’re being obtuse, but that is how all men are, aren’t they? They complain about the complexity of women, but I don’t know that we’d be so hard to figure out if they ever took the time to listen.”

He frowned. “I thought I listened, but you… You do not agree, do you?”

“You definitely weren’t last time we talked.”

He sat down beside her. “If I listen now, will you agree to continue as my guide and share everything we can? I was thinking of… traveling. I have been in one place for a while, and I think that might be a part of the reason the fear was so bad, the boredom. I was creating problems because, as you claimed, I was restless.”

“So you want to travel?”

“If you will come with me.”

She folded her arms over her chest. “How? Where would we go, and how are we supposed to get there? You said you don’t have a spaceship, so…?”

“I was hoping… a car. I’m not talking about another planet, though I do wish I could show you that. I want to show you a lot more of the universe, but your planet is large and diverse, and there is much we could see. I think a car would be best. I have used them in the past without hurting anyone, and we could take plenty of breaks to ensure that I do not ruin the vehicle, so… every tourist stop and park and overlook… anything we can find. Does that… Does it have any appeal for you?”

“Oh, Tynan, you should know I’d go anywhere with you.”

He smiled. “Then… you forgive me?”

“Maybe.”

He frowned. “Maybe?”

She smiled, and he was reminded that he would never understand her no matter how much time they spent together.

Author’s Note: I think I should quote Doctor Who at this point. Yeah. Not that I used the same words, but I’ll steal them for the title.

I guess you could consider this prompted. This thought wouldn’t leave me alone.

“I don’t age. I regenerate. But humans decay. You wither and you die… You can spend the rest of your life with me. But I can’t spend the rest of mine with you. I have to live on, alone.” ~The Doctor, “School Reunion.”

Being with Luna was sharing and learning, and he enjoyed every moment of it. She still read one hour a day, since the kids were disappointed and resorted to threats and tears when she tried to tell them no, but they did a lot more than that as well. Museums, gardens, sculpture parks, they went and saw them all. He did not know that he had ever had such an enjoyable time before, not even on that fourth planet. Having Luna as a companion made each of the new experiences richer, more fulfilling, and when she asked him to share his knowledge of the universe, he found it was able to counter the hunger just as well as his curiosity.

He had to wonder if he had found someone like Luna before—though he didn’t know that it was possible to find anyone like Luna, she was too special, too unique—if he would have been able to avoid the disasters that had happened in the past. She made so much possible for him, and her presence was almost… an addiction.

He was of the vortex. The only addiction he could ever have was to destruction, yet he thought that she had somehow supplanted the hunger. He did not understand how that could be possible, but the hunger was endless and his need to spend time with Luna was equally limitless. He did not enjoy the time they spent apart. That was the problem.

He was far too dependent on her.

Children of the vortex did not die of natural means. The only way to kill them was to turn the hunger against them, and that could kill—did kill—but without the hunger, they could exist forever. He was, in some sense, immortal.

Luna was mortal.

Far too mortal. Humans had one of the shortest lifespans in the universe, still plagued by disease and warfare and their lack of development. He liked many things about them, but he knew them to be flawed. He knew them to be fragile.

Luna’s mother had died. Luna had almost given up on life. He’d fought to get her back, but what happened if he could not do it again? What happened if she were to fall ill with the same disease that had taken her mother? What if some other disease or some accident ended her life?

Even if she reached the end of her existence in a natural way, growing old and dying, it would still be too soon for him. He didn’t know what he would do if that happened. He needed her.

“Did you ruin another one of my books? You look terrible.”

“No.”

“Okay.” She sat down next to him, frowning. “This about Alvin? I admit, I kind of wish we could… send him away for a while. His hive-speak is so… grating. I don’t like the way he follows me around, either. I know he’s… creating his own hive with us, but I’m not a hive person. I’m independent and eccentric. I need space.”

“It is not Alvin. It… If I told someone from the other worlds that he was here, they would come and take him away—”

“No! They’d lock him up and do cruel things to him, and he doesn’t deserve that. He’s annoying, but he’s not evil or anything. He just needs to learn boundaries.”

“Then you must teach him boundaries.”

She frowned. “What is with the tone? I don’t like that tone. That’s a bad tone, and you’re not—I know that the voice is as real as the face, but Tynan, when you talk like that—”

“You’re human.”

She nodded. “Yes, I am. That isn’t news. I’ve always been human. Unless you thought I wasn’t, in which case, I’m kind of curious about what you think I might have been. Do a lot of species look human or is it just us that does this?”

He shook his head. “There are many humanoids. You are not so unique a species.”

“Oh.”

“You are human. Therefore, you are mortal.”

“Everyone dies, yeah, so—”

“I don’t. Not naturally. If they find me, they may kill me, but I could potentially live forever.”

“That’s nice. You’ll get to see everything the universe has to offer, and it will—”

“You won’t.”

She stopped, staring at him for a moment. He didn’t like bringing up her death, didn’t want to think about it, and yet he could not stop thinking about it. He was afraid to lose her. She swallowed. “I… Well, it’s not so bad. I’m not dying right now, and I can expect a few good decades and—”

“How am I supposed to face eternity without you?”

Author’s Note: I had thought that the alien would do a lot more traveling without Luna before she became this big of a part of his life, but he didn’t agree with that, and neither did she, so the story is about them, not his travels. I should have known.

“We have to do something about Alvin,” Luna said, leaning against the counter. Her hair had turquoise in it today, matching the blouse she wore, and he thought that she should try that color more often. Part of it suited her very well. The rest of it didn’t, and he started thinking about the stone and the variations, and he liked thinking like that. Yes, Luna needed to wear more colors like turquoise. “It’s fine here, where people assume he’s a robot or a sculpture, but I can tell you’re getting restless, and we can’t take him anywhere like this.”

He frowned. He didn’t know why Alvin was a problem. They were fine, all three of them. He couldn’t say four because Luna’s father still hated him, but the rest of them were enjoying their time. Luna had shown him sculptures in the park, and they’d both laughed as they decided what was junk and what was treasure.

Luna said he was treasure. He said he couldn’t be, but she was.

“I am not restless.”

“Sure. That’s why I no longer have a copy of Northanger Abbey.”

He lowered his head. He hadn’t meant to destroy the book. He was just… testing her theory again. True, he had been a bit bored, but Alvin was sleeping and Luna had been eating dinner with her father, so… he made a mistake. “I’m sorry.”

“I know,” she said, reaching toward him and then forcing her hand back down with a sigh. “I know you didn’t mean to, and I can tell you’re still hurting from what you have to do to stop yourself. That’s the trouble. You need more to keep you busy. I’m not enough.”

“Yes, you are. You’re…”

“I’m what?” She asked, but he couldn’t answer that. She shook her head. “You can’t stay here forever just to keep me from my dark moods. I’m never going to be… normal or fixed, but I—”

“There’s nothing wrong with you.”

“That’s sweet of you to say, but there’s plenty. I’m well aware of my faults. No one is perfect, Tynan, and definitely not me. You discounted the things I told you, and maybe you’re right to, but I know I’ve done things that I shouldn’t have, things I’m not proud of, things that I wish I could take back or change or just… forget…”

She turned away, and he went around the counter, not wanting to let her suffer or fall into the darkness again. She needed him, and he didn’t want her to lose that radiance. “Don’t start thinking you need to go back on the pills that destroy you or that you need to be punished. Think of all the good you do for so many people. We just… We’ll change the routine. We don’t have to go far. We’ll find somewhere that we can take Alvin where he is not so unusual. Don’t go dark on me now. Please.”

She let out a breath, looking up at him. “Tynan…”

He jerked his hand back, not sure how he could have done that without realizing it. He shook his head. “Are you… okay? Did I hurt you?”

She shook her head. “It didn’t even sting like static this time. I’m not sure what is going on, but it’s so confusing. Sometimes you can touch me and do nothing, and I think—”

“You’re not crazy. Maybe it’s because I just ate the book and turned the hunger on myself. I believe the way they hold my kind prisoner is to get us to turn the hunger on ourselves and then capture us. They keep us that way somehow, still feeding off ourselves, and that makes us docile, and if I was still under that effect—”

“That’s horrible! How can they do that? That’s torture, cruel and unusual punishment. These people call themselves enlightened? Bastards, the lot of them, and if they ever touch you—”

“Luna, you can’t protect me. If that is to be my fate, it will be. I don’t see how it could be when they can only find us after a large feeding, and I don’t do that. I am here with you, letting my curiosity keep the hunger away.”

She nodded, but he saw the worry in her eyes. He wanted the smile back, the radiant one.

“What if we left Alvin here with your father and went to a museum?”

“What if we went to that exhibit on space and you got to tell me just how wrong our human comprehension of it was?”

“Me the teacher? The guide?”

“Why not? I bet you’ve never done that before.”

He smiled. “No, you are correct. I have never done that. I think I might enjoy that, as well—I will, if you are with me.”

“I won’t ever leave you,” she told him, giving him the smile he’d hoped for. He longed to touch her, but he did not dare do that again. “Let’s go before Alvin wakes up.”

“Yes. Oh, I forgot to tell you—I like your choice of color today. You should wear more like it.”

“You mean colors with unique names or turquoise colored stuff, specifically?”

“Perhaps both.”

She laughed.

Author’s Note: He said he was happy when he was on Earth, but he wasn’t the only one.

Luna radiates. He was not sure what it was about her—not the white paint in her hair or the brighter colors that seemed to have become a part of her wardrobe—but she radiated some kind of… glow. He thought her smile was wider and more powerful every time she did it, that she somehow managed to illuminate everywhere she went.

With the medication gone—she’d said she flushed it with a rather wide grin—she was much lighter. Her smile came fast, flashing across her face and making just about everyone she was around join right in.

Her father disapproved, and he knew that. Despite her happiness, her father still thought she was crazy. He could not complain, not in front of the children and crowds that gathered for her now popular book readings, ones she staged right outside the shop. She had wanted to resume their readings, just him and her—and Alvin, since he did not leave them—but they had gathered a crowd on the first occasion that grew larger by the day.

As long as the crowd stayed away from him, he did not mind. He liked listening to her read, and she always picked interesting books, things that entertained and made her audience smile. They loved her hair and her “robotic” alien—Alivin—and she had more people around her than ever, all of them glad to be with her.

He thought that they could see just how special she was. Crowds and crowds of people learning to appreciate the value of this one person. She was something else.

A happy Luna was a better Luna, and he did not know how anyone could complain about her, though he supposed her father might try.

“You’re smiling. Well, the smile isn’t real, but you’re smiling, and I don’t think you’ve stopped staring at me all day. Did I get paint in more than just my hair? Something in my teeth?” Luna sat down next to him, getting closer to him than she should, like always. She was so difficult sometimes, but at the same time, her difficulties made her more unique and even more appealing.

“I am thinking that people now see what I see.”

“Oh?”

“You remember when I told you about the man that told me beauty was in the eye of the beholder?”

“Yes. I remember I told you not to let someone else’s cliché stand in the way of making knowledge your own. Or something like that but less pretentious. What is now beautiful that wasn’t before? The shop? It looks better these days. I blame Alvin for that. He has so many arms that it’s easy for him to paint the whole thing.”

“I think they see what I saw in you.”

“A crazy lunatic guide to show you life on Earth?”

“So much more than that, Luna. Do you know what you do to all these people just by smiling at them? The kids who listen to your books or that play with Alvin…”

She shrugged. “I don’t know that I care about making an impact on all of them. I just think that I enjoy having you around all the time. I’m spoiled. It’s nice. I don’t feel like I could be wrong about what you are, not when you stay close, and I don’t have time to doubt what I know.”

He frowned. “If I had to leave, you would… go back to the medication and thinking you were crazy and not smiling like this?”

“Well, I wouldn’t smile so much—I’d miss you. I don’t like the medication, and I don’t think I’d want to go back on it, but… you’re not planning on leaving, are you? I thought you said you were staying. Staying… forever.”

He looked at her. “I like being here. I like hearing you read. I would like to do other things as well—I wanted to know what you think of that art he said was in the eye of the beholder, maybe more than that. I would ask your opinion of many things.”

She smiled. “You don’t usually have to ask. I tend to speak my mind.”

“I know.”

Her eyes went down to his hand, and she sighed, but she looked up at him with a forced smile. “Where would you like to go?”

“What about your father?”

“He is… He still thinks that I was talking crazy about you and Alvin, but if I don’t mention the weird stuff, I think he’s getting closer to forgiving you for getting me off my meds. I told him—I’m happy. That should be all that matters.”

“It does seem more complicated than that as far as I can tell.”

She patted the ground next to his hand, and he smiled, knowing that she would have touched him if she could have. “It is, but you don’t have to worry about it. We can take a short trip. Where do you want to go?”

He hesitated. “I’m not sure I need to go anywhere.”

She smiled, and he wished there was some way to hold onto that radiance behind it.

Author’s Note: I said I’d get back to the first part eventually.

I sort of did.

“You admit, then, to breaking the universal laws and interfering with the lower species on a planet that has been quarantined for the sake of its own development? What right do you have to flaunt our laws? The fact that you, yourself, are a creature of destruction? You cannot expect us to believe you are different when all you do is what you please—”

“I could have killed them. I could have killed you. I chose not to.”

“You do not have the right to violate our laws.”

Tynan studied the matron, leaning forward. “I have no rights at all in your mind, so I think it matters little if I was to bend the rules you have set forth. All I am to you is something to be eliminated, to be killed before I can touch anything, and if that is so, why should I care what your laws dictate for you and the rest of the universe? You do not care if I obey your laws—I would have been given no opportunity to do so if you had your way.”

She folded her arms over her chest, shaking her head. “These… humans are not ready to interact with us. They are not ready for any foreign presence. You may have destroyed their entire way of life, disrupted their natural progress. You have altered their history and—”

“I interacted with few humans, and most did not believe me to be what I am.”

“Do you honestly believe that this… Luna you speak of, that you were a positive influence on her? You have said she doubted your existence and believed herself insane. How can you claim that you have done no harm to her?”

“I saved Luna. Her father would have had her spirit die and that would have killed her in the end. Luna is unique. She was not wrong to be the way she was, and she was capable of understanding me and the universe. The others thought she was wrong, but she was not.”

“You could have killed her.”

“I didn’t.”

“You want us to believe that you are innocent, then? That you should be spared because you can keep yourself from destroying one human? She is nothing compared to what you have done in the past.”

He shook his head. “What do you know of what I have done? You would not know of Luna or my visit to the human world if I had not told you of them. You would not know anything of me if I had not shared it. Yet you would condemn me. I knew that before I spoke, and I cannot say that I expected to change your mind—my fate has been set for some time. I would ask you to leave now. I wish to be alone. I want to go back to my memories of when I was happy.”

She frowned. “You think you were happy on the human world?”

“No.”

She shook her head, turning to walk away from him. He knew it would make no difference to her, but he could not help speaking again. “I know I was happy on the human world.”

Author’s Note: So, I couldn’t help hearing a certain lyric after the first part of this arc, and so I put a bit together on a song from Pink Floyd’s “Dark Side of the Moon” album, the song that sort of influenced this arc (mostly after the fact, with the exception of today’s bit, that was written after I got the other post ready.)

I think I have a bit of a fascination with brain damage and thinking things aren’t real.

Tynan, though, he was determined to prove that he was real, and he did.

Were the situation less pressing and he less worried about Luna succumbing to the medication that she was on, he might have gone in search of what love was, trying to figure out what she’d meant by her words before she shut him out of the back room. He wanted to explore, almost thought that would be easier than trying to fight for her, but he couldn’t leave, either.

He didn’t know what to do.

“We see friend Luna?”

“Friend Luna doesn’t want to see us,” he told Alvin, not sure how to change that. She had the shop locked up, and she didn’t leave the building, only her father did. He didn’t know what to do to get her to come out. He could have gotten in, that would have been easy. He didn’t need doors to keep him out, nothing could stop him if he didn’t want it to, and he didn’t know what he was going to do if she didn’t come out soon.

He might let the hunger take the shop door, but he didn’t know that he could trust himself to stop, even if all he wanted was to see Luna again, to talk to her. He had to make sure that she was all right. If he could see her smile again, maybe he could leave and not feel the same way about letting her father take care of her. He would be fine with it if he didn’t think that Luna herself was being suppressed by those drugs they gave her.

He waited for her father to leave and went to the door, breaking the lock. He focused the hunger inward, not caring about the pain so long as he could get to Luna. “Alvin, go try that other door. If you can’t open it, I will.”

“You cannot touch. Vortex.”

“I know—but the vortex will break the lock, and we might need to break the lock,” he said, stumbling toward the second door. Alvin opened it and flew into the back.

He had never seen this part of the building. He had thought it full of more books, but this was their home. He knew that he was trespassing, but he had to find Luna. She could not stay here, hidden away in the back, locked away from the world.

“Here, vortex. Friend Luna is here,” Alvin called, pointing two arms into a bedroom. He stepped past the wings, looking at the bed and shaking his head. She was worse today than she had been the last time he saw her. More life seemed to have left her, and she didn’t even lift her head.

He sighed. “Oh, Luna. You cannot stay like this. You have to get up. You have to try.”

“I thought you were gone.”

“I can’t leave you like this.”

She closed her eyes. “If you leave, I’m better. That’s what it is. I’ll be sane if you just go away.”

“You’re sane now. You always were.”

She snorted. “I used to let my boyfriend set my hair on fire. I got arrested for vandalizing those huge ads down on the corner—I don’t see why they complained about me putting clothes on her because there was a school down the street and I kept seeing those boys come and stare at the model in her underwear—and they took away my paints so I stole some. I used to go to the park and draw in chalk and think I could jump into them like the movies. I painted my dreams… I think that scared them most of all, the things coming out of my head…”

“I want to see your dreams.”

“They… They got rid of all those paintings. The places in my dreams weren’t fit to be seen, those dark corners of my mind not supposed to see the light…”

He shook his head. “You have a lot more light in you than dark, but if that was how you rid yourself of the darkness, like I use my curiosity to combat my hunger, who are they to say that you’re wrong?”

She lifted her head. “You would say that, wouldn’t you? You’re my mind trying to tell me that I’m fine when I’m not. The things I used to paint belonged in horror films and nightmares, and I used to be scared of them. Overactive imagination, they’d said that since I was too little to remember. There’s this dream about a monster chasing me, hunting and running, always chasing… Only when it caught up to me—the monster had my face. I swear they tried to lock me away then. I remember medication and days of sleep without dreams… The dreams have stopped again.”

“Life has stopped. This isn’t living. What about art and curiosity and learning? You can’t do that here, in your bed. You are so much more than what is here in your room. The world is bigger and the universe even more so. I wanted to keep sharing books with you. I know I left, but I just thought… I am so dangerous, too dangerous to stay… I thought I’d kill you or hurt you. I don’t want that. I still think I might, but if you’d only get up, I think… I’d stay forever.”

“You’re not real.”

“I am. I will prove it somehow, but you have to stop taking that medication and thinking you’re crazy. You’re not. Alvin’s real, and I’m real, and I’ll show you what a real monster is capable of. You’re not a monster.”

She let out a breath. “Anyone can be a monster. We just don’t always know we’re the monster until someone else tells us. There’s a reason they call jealousy the green-eyed monster.”

“Your eyes aren’t green.”

“I’ve never really been jealous of anyone. Never felt that strongly about any of the guys I was with. They never mattered enough.”

“That doesn’t mean that you’re crazy.”

“What about this… thing with us? Doesn’t that seem insane to you? I can’t touch you. You can’t touch me. Your very nature defies the laws of the universe. You shouldn’t be here, shouldn’t be real. Yet somehow you mean more to me than anyone other than my parents. Maybe even more than my dad, as much as he’d hate knowing that.”

He looked at the floor for a moment. “I never went back to see anyone else again. I never thought that one person could be enough, couldn’t keep me curious enough to make the hunger stay away, and so I never went to the same place twice, not before you.”

“Oh.”

“I never had to fight to convince anyone they were sane before, either.”

She laughed, sitting up, but she looked so weak he almost told her to lie down again. “You found yourself one crazy human to use as a guide or whatever it is I am to you, but I suppose that helps. I’m always all over the place, so you can still be curious because you never know what I’m going to do.”

“Yes.”

“You weren’t supposed to agree with that.”

“Oh.”

“Do you have a spaceship, then?”

“Not exactly. I can go anywhere in space and time because of what I am—a distortion of that same space and time—and I don’t breathe the same way that humans do. Alvin, though, he needs air like you do, and so we actually… um… well, we got a ride on a shuttle that passes by the system and sort of… jumped off when we got nearby because technically, this planet is off-limits to everyone.”

She frowned. “What?”

“Humans are not yet developed, not according to the standards of the universe. This planet is to be left unexplored and untouched by more advanced societies until such time as you are ready to meet us. I prefer the undeveloped worlds, though. More curiosity here, more things to see as they’re created and learned and discovered.”

“You can’t get back, can you?”

“I can. I can go wherever I want. It’s taking you and Alvin with me that is the problem.”

She nodded. “Okay.”

“You think you’re crazy again, don’t you?”

“Maybe a little, but I don’t think I want to stay in bed anymore. You know, I think I’d rather be crazy and have you stick around than be miserable and alone and drugged.” She moved toward her closet, taking out a sweater and pulling it on over her other clothes. “Besides, maybe it’s better if I don’t go anywhere. I’m all Dad has, and I don’t know what he’d do if he was alone. Someone has to take care of him. He’s so lost without Mom…”

“He can’t make you sick just to have someone to take care of, though.”

She closed her eyes. “I wish I could touch you.”

“So do I.”