Chapter 1: Goodbye
Valentine's heart breaks the day Gee runs up to him bursting with excitement, his eyes glowing an unnatural gold, like sunlight through amber instead of their usual black-brown. Gee half tackles, half hugs him, crushing him to his chest as he picks Valentine up and jubilantly swings him around. If this was any other day or any other time, Valentine would be making half hearted protests by now, whacking him on the shoulders and trying to wriggle out of his grasp, demanding to be put back down.
One of the last procedures performed on participants in the DEXO program in preparation for their exodus into space has the noted and curious side effect of permanently changing a person's eye color. The process involves exposing them to massive doses of radiation and magic. It's a preventative measure to keep all their augmentations from mutating the wrong way, spiraling out of control and turning them into monsters.
It's not foolproof but it will give them a solid base of protection against whatever they might run into as they flee the only planet they've ever known. It will be the turning point in their lives, the one thing that will definitively set them apart as other and not entirely human anymore. They will no longer be able to hide how they've been changed.
"They set a date! I'm shipping out!" Gee shouts right into Valentine's ear, still clutching him tight. "And I got ranked as first class!" It is objectively good news, the best news really. Almost everyone in the program will ship out sooner or later but to receive a ranking of first class means that Gee will have one of the highest positions of authority on both his flight out and the future settlement he'll be a part of despite the fact that he's not yet out of his teens.
Valentine can't breathe and he's not sure if it's just because Gee still doesn't know his own augmented strength or it's the crushing realization that he's run out of time. Valentine has no hope of catching up to him now and his best and only friend is leaving him behind. He's run himself ragged and taken unthinkable risks so that they could ship out together. He's done everything he could so that whatever their uncertain future held he wouldn't have to face it alone. It wasn't enough.
Finally sensing that something's wrong, Gee sets him down far more gently than he'd picked him up. His strange new eyes meet Valentine's, filled with concern.
"Val?"
Valentine clenches his jaw and his face grows hot in a desperate bid to keep already formed tears from falling. He's not going to cry. He won't. Gee's smile falters, and he gets that pitying look that Valentine absolutely can't stand, especially not today.
"Oh, Val."
Tears spill down his face and the disappointment of once again coming up short and the humiliation of his best friend feeling sorry for him is just too much to bear. Gee moves forward to give him another hug and Valentine lashes out, hitting his chest with both palms flat, shoving for all he's worth. He turns. He runs.
His lungs are on fire and his throat's raw and he can't stop the tears and all he can taste is salt.
At some point he body slams his way out an alarmed door and he can hear the alarm and raised voices but it's all just background noise beyond the slap of his shoes on the pavement and his gasping hitched breathing. He trips over his own feet, skins his knees, his palms.
He gets lectured in the infirmary as they debride and disinfect his wounds but he's miles outside his own body and despite the pain it all feels like it's happening to someone else, some other poor fucker that just seems doomed to be alone.
He's told he's confined to quarters and he doesn't care, the whole place is a prison anyway. The only thing that made it tolerable was Gee, and Gee—
Gee ships out before Valentine's confinement is over; he doesn't get to say goodbye.
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