Actions

Work Header

Rating:
Archive Warning:
Category:
Fandom:
Relationship:
Characters:
Additional Tags:
Language:
English
Stats:
Published:
2025-06-03
Completed:
2025-06-15
Words:
21,700
Chapters:
7/7
Comments:
82
Kudos:
15
Bookmarks:
4
Hits:
176

The Strength to Shatter

Summary:

Five times Spensa Nightshade almost cried.
And one time she did.

(The Epilogue is out now.)

Notes:

Hope you enjoy this emotionally driven mess of what I like to call fanfiction 😭

(See the end of the work for more notes.)

Chapter 1: The Price of Peace

Notes:

Aaand look who’s back :)

Here it is, guys—first person is really hard to write so please don’t judge, and tell me if i messed up the tense anywhere.

(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)

Chapter Text

Sometimes, I forget how young we are.

It’s easy to forget, when we’ve fought for the planet for our whole lives and taken down galactic tyrants, when our names are spoken with reverence across half the known galaxy and fear in the other half. When the citizens of Detritus seem to pause and look at us like we really matter.

Like we’re not just kids who had to grow up between war, loss, and hopelessness.

We’re legends now. War heroes. The kind people respect, look up to, admire, even talk about—

But sometimes I catch my reflection in M-Bot’s canopy glass and I look eighteen. I feel eighteen.

And tonight—

Tonight I felt eighteen and angry.

Not at anything important, like the broken systems or the ghosts of the dead or the parts of myself I still don’t understand despite everything.

Just at him.

Jorgen skipped dinner. Again.

And I was going to yell at him.

Not dramatically. Not in a “scream in the middle of a command room” kind of way.

More of a “Jorgen Weight, you are not invincible and if you miss one more meal I’m going to throw your paperwork into the recycler and make sure you’re can’t get it back” sort of way.

So yeah. I was mad.

The corridors of Platform Prime echoed under my boots as I strode past confused pilots and technicians.

I didn’t stop to talk. Didn’t wave. Didn’t even exchange a feeling glance. I was on a mission. A very righteous one. FM had seen him slip out of the mess hall fifteen minutes after sitting down. His tray barely touched. Again. She hadn’t stopped me when I shoved my tray aside and stood. She’d just nodded sagely like she’d already accepted that sometimes—violence was inevitable.

He’d been doing this all week. He’d vanish. Always apologetic. Always ‘I'll be back soon, love you’.

And he never came back.

I knew he wasn’t avoiding me. Not on purpose. That wasn’t Jorgen. But that made it worse, somehow. Because he wasn’t avoiding me—he was avoiding rest.

And I knew why. The post-war restructuring was a nightmare—half the galaxy was still trying to figure out how to govern itself without the Superiority’s boot on its throat, and Jorgen was at the center of it. Not because he wanted to be. Because he was good at it. Because he was Admiral—it was part of his job. Because they trusted him. Because he never, ever said no when someone needed him.

But he was working himself into the ground, and I was done watching him tire himself, done pretending it was fine.

The door to his quarters hissed open when I approached. He hadn’t even locked it. Typical. I stormed inside, brows furrowing and already opening my mouth to let him have it—

And then I stopped.

The words died in my throat, killed by the quiet.

Jorgen was… asleep. Slumped forward on his desk, cheek resting against a stack of crumpled reports. His hair was a disheveled mess of dark curls falling across his face, and his mouth was slightly open—just enough that I could hear the soft rhythm of his breathing over the hum of the lights.

I stared at him. My anger drained out like someone had opened an airlock in my soul, seeping into the floorboards below.

He wasn’t just napping. He had passed out, mid-sentence by the look of it, because the pen was still in his hand, ink trailing off the edge of a half-filled page. The overhead light cast a soft, pale glow across his features, soft with sleep, catching on the faint shadows under his eyes. Shadows that hadn’t gone away since Evensong.

And I—

Stars.

I hadn’t realized how worn out he looked until now. Not sickly. Just… hollowed out. Like someone had scraped small pieces of him away and replaced them with duty and expectation and constant sleepless nights.

Up close, I could see the exhaustion written across his face. There was a tiny crease between his brows, even in sleep, like he’s still thinking, still trying to solve some impossible equation the rest of us don’t even know exists. His fingers twitched once, still curled around the pen.

A cold, half-drunk cup of coffe sat abandoned beside him. The algae ration bar I told him to eat at *breakfast* was still sealed. And I could see the shape of his to-do list glowing faintly on the datapad screen beneath his hand. It just kept going. Line after line. Task after task. Expectation after expectation.

I stepped forward on instinct. Slower now. Like the floor was covered in shards of glass and I’d wandered in by mistake. Doomslug followed me in, but she didn’t chirp or flute ‘Jerkface!’ like she usually did when she saw him. She hyperjumped over to the corner and curled up silently, her frills drooping.

My heart twisted, chest cracking open with sudden wave of emotions that threatened to overwhelm me.

Because he shouldn’t be like this. He shouldn’t be alone with all this weight.

He’s just eighteen. Eighteen years old and already trying to fix the galaxy that burned down around us. A boy who should be out flying, laughing, being a scudding person—not staying up until 0400 hours rewriting policy drafts no one else knows how to handle. He tries so hard to be everything for everyone. Admiral. Diplomat. Shield.
And I—I forget sometimes.

I forget that he’s human. That he breaks, too. That he’s not a statue made of logic responsibility, and diplomacy, no matter how good he is at pretending that he is.

I reached out, slow and tentative, and eased the pen from his fingers. He didn’t stir. His breathing stayed steady. There’s ink on the side of his hand. One of the reports under his arm was wrinkled from the weight of his head.

I wanted to shake him. I wanted to wake him up and yell, What the hell, Jerkface? You’re not a machine. You’re allowed to stop.

But I didn’t. Because that would be cruel. And this—this moment was too fragile to break. Too brittle with the weight of unspoken things.

Instead, I grabbed the thin blanket from the couch and draped it around his shoulders. I smoothened it down gently, letting my fingers linger just a moment too long near his face. His skin was warm. I wanted to touch him. Brush back the hair from his face. Kiss him awake, maybe. But I didn’t.

Because if I did, I might say something. I might whisper things I’m not ready to say aloud. Things like ‘You don’t have to do this alone.
 You’re allowed to rest .
I love you too much to watch you break’.

I stepped back slightly.

My chest ached in that way it does when a scream gets stuck somewhere behind your ribs. I swallowed hard, blinking faster than I should.

I forced in a slow breath, but it caught in my chest like it snagged on something sharp.

But I didn’t cry. I almost did.

Instead, I walked over, dimmed the lights, I sat down on the floor beside him, back against the desk, knees pulled up to my chest. The corner of the table dug into my skull—but it didn’t matter. I was too tired to care. And for a long time, I just sat there. Watching him breathe. Letting the quiet wrap around both of us.

Because if he won’t rest for himself, I’ll make sure he rests for me.

⚔︎ ⋆⁺₊⋆ ☾ ⋆⁺₊⋆ ⚔︎

Time bends itself strangely when the war is over. When peace is there, fragile and lingering, but you don’t know what to do with it.

I don’t know how long I sat there, watching the rise and fall of his chest, feeling the slow steady hum of a universe finally at rest around us. But the peace in the room wasn’t peaceful. It was fragile. Like it could shatter with one careless breath.

I tilted my head back, resting it against the desk behind me, the corner pressing deeper into my skull—and closed my eyes.

This is fine.

I’m fine.

I’m just sitting in a quiet room, watching the boy I love sleep on top of thirty-seven pages of strategic debriefs. That’s normal. That’s fine.

Except it’s not. Because the war is over, but he’s still fighting. And I don’t know how to stop him.

I wanted to carry this weight for him. I wanted to help him. I want to pull the galaxy off his shoulders and throw it into a distant sun. But I didn’t know how.

And that—stars, that was the worst part.

Because this was Jorgen. My Jerkface. The boy who used to argue with me about flight patterns and call me “impulsive and reckless” every time I did something mildly dangerous. The boy who kissed me with fire like I was something he’d spent his whole life trying not to hope for.

And he’s so tired.

My eyes drifted away momentarily from his sleeping face and landed on something on the floor near his chair.

A piece of paper. Torn in half.

I didn’t want to look. I didn’t want to scudding know. But my fingers moved before my brain caught up with my actions. I reached forward slowly and picked up the two jagged edges, holding them together like a shattered promise.

The paper was worn, crumpled, and stained with tears—his tears, I realized, the edges smudged and wrinkled like the ghost of something no one wanted to re,ever.

And then, as my eyes skimmed the first few lines—the realization hit me.

It was a eulogy.

My eulogy.

Jorgen had written it. For me.

In case the war had taken me. In case I hadn’t made it back. In case Evensong was the end. In case he had to leave me behind.

The words were neat, careful, like he’d rewritten them a hundred times, trying to get them right. Trying to say all the things he was too afraid to say out loud.

Eulogy for Spensa Nightshade
. Written by Admiral Jorgen Weight. 
Do not file. Personal.
If you're hearing this… then she's gone.
And I don’t know how to begin, because nothing I say will ever be enough to hold the space she filled together.
Spensa Nightshade was the bravest pilot I’ve ever known. Not just because she charged headfirst into danger. But because she did it with fire in her soul and defiance in her gaze. She challenged the universe to do its worst and dared it to try harder. She made us all believe we could be more—more than our fears, more than our bloodlines, more than the wreckage we came from.
She fought for a society that hated her. That challenged her. That tried to make her believe she wasn’t capable of fighting. And yet—she proved them all wrong.
She was reckless, impossible, loud, and infuriating.
She was a nightmare to command.
She was chaos and courage and loyalty wrapped in a very brave, very selfless package.
She was my friend.
She was my wingmate. My partner. My heart.
And I don’t know who I am without her.
I should’ve told her I loved her more.
I shouldn’t have argued with her.
I shouldn’t have let her go alone.
If this war has taught us anything, it’s that we don’t always get to say goodbye. But if I had one more minute—just one more—I’d tell her everything I never said enough.
That I was proud of her. That I loved her more than I ever thought possible. That every time she looked at me like I mattered, like I wasn’t just holding the world together stress and responsibility, I’d believe it.
Because she believed in me.
And now I have to carry that belief forward, somehow, without her.
We’ll go on. We’ll survive. We’ll defeat the Superiority. We’ll build something better.
Because that’s what she’d want. But none of it will ever feel quite right.
Because there should have been more time.
Because I should’ve told her all this while she was still here.
Because, stars help me—

The final line was smudged. Watermarked with a single teardrop that spread the navy ink outward like a tiny supernova.

She was the light we all followed, and though the stars may dim eventually, her fire will never fade.

And that was when my eyes stung. I swallowed hard. My throat tightened, and suddenly all the anger I’d carried down the hallways minutes ago turned to a foul-tasting ash in my mouth.

Jorgen had carried this—this—with him. Alone. The possibility of losing me. The weight of a future without me, written down on a scrap of paper hidden in his office like a secret he wasn’t ready to share.

I wanted to shout. To cry. To rip the paper apart in fury that and to obliterate the fact that he had thought he might lose me. That I might not come back. But I didn’t.

I sat there, holding the torn halves in my hand, the edges rough against my fingers.

And I let the quiet break me a little.

Because the war was over. But the scars? They were still here. In the air between us.
In the things, word, and emotions left unsaid.

I folded the paper carefully and slid it into my pocket.

When I looked back at him—still asleep on his reports—I felt something fragile and fierce bloom in my chest.

Love. And fear. And hope. Maybe even a sense of protection.

All tangled together in one, tight knot that refused to untangle.

Notes:

I… I fucked up her voice, didn’t I 💀 I’m sorry

The rest of the chapters probably won’t be this long, I just had. A lot to say in this one. Thanks for reading!