Lieutenant Doz Finch - Everlastings
Doz Finch
((The Cenotaph, Nassau, Ma no Umi))
Timothy Hardwick had dreamt of one day building the galaxy's newest and fastest warp drive; he had crafted simulations, written dissertations and essays, etched his designs into paper, palm and PADD. And he believed in his heart of hearts that he was going to do it, too. Because he had believed that anything was possible. It was a remarkable and unique quality he had, because his short life had been anything but conventional.
Doz Finch had known more about him than others had known; she had known about his difficult childhood, raised by a single parent who grappled with depression and other demons, while his other lived out her days at the New Zealand Penal Settlement, feigning interest with irregular letters, and most of the time forgetting his birthdays. He’d told Doz that no one had ever gotten him a birthday cake before, let alone organised a party. So she had been the first to do that for him, and had taken him under her wing, heartbroken, and a little angry by how let down he’d been.
In many ways, his life had putten hers into some perspective—her own mother, Iris, was well known in the neighbourhood as the ghostly woman who twitched curtains. Her agoraphobia, and her own penchant for misery, had always felt like a huge burden, one Doz could never understand and bitterly resented. She’d lost important years of her life to it, succumbing to her role as a caregiver as her brothers darted off for bigger dreams and ambitions. But…she’d had Murphy. Without him, she wasn’t sure what might have become of her.
But Timothy had no such person.
His life had been a trial of ornamental design; painfully carved, chipped along its contours, and with a complexity that made a person only admire the beauty if they dared to realise its story. He had every reason to be a terrible person, and yet he wasn’t. He had every reason to give up, and yet he never did. He had every reason to loathe, and yet…all he seemed to do was love.
And he was a fantastic engineer.
As Doz Finch thought about his life, picturing his bright face, and his good soul, she shook her head, staring at the epitaphs of those she had never known. She’d needed to get away from the ship—with a fractured rib, the doctors had ordered she rested for a few weeks, as if resting was a word in her vocabulary. She had laughed at the idea, despite the prickling feeling beneath her skin. But no such laughter could be found there, at the Cenotaph, as her brown eyes squinted at the text written upon it. She could have stood there for hours, had the words not started to blur in and out of focus.
She looked down at the carefully arranged piles of flowers beneath the slab and placed her own white bouquet, lips squeezing together as she did…and a single teardrop dripped down her cheek. Then another. And another. Before she knew it, she was weeping endlessly...as if a dam had finally breached after many years of erosion.
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