When Eno rushed outside the base, the Inhuman children who had been released home were preparing to set off.
Nightingale followed him carefully, fearing that he might accidentally bump himself. In fact, Eno was not that fragile at all, but Drake was afraid that he might have an accident and asked Nightingale to follow him every step of the way.
Eno searched through the neatly organised line of children and finally saw the furry little head. He walked up to 588 as everyone watched and handed her the flower pot that he had carefully covered in his arms with his trench coat.
He entrusted Nightingale to buy it from their planet and send it over. There was a violet plant in the flowerpot, which was still in bud, dangling in mid-air, its delicate bud still adorned with a fresh droplet of water.
Eno squatted down, looked directly into the girl’s innocent eyes and whispered: “Try it ba.”
588 nodded apprehensively and placed her hand on the bud in full view of everyone. The girl gently closed her eyes, and then one by one, those shyly hidden lavender petals burst into bloom, with a lovely ring of white lace set around the outer edge.
These lavender flowers were so pale and clear, gorgeous and blooming in a season where they didn’t belong. 588 stared at them with a misplaced look, her mouth slightly open: “So…so pretty……”
“If you want a flower, you need to learn to grow it yourself from scratch, not go and grab someone else’s well-grown flower.” Eno’s tone was very soft as he looked at the girl’s delighted expression, “Inhumans are a very powerful race, each of you have your own unique abilities, the whole race can do almost anything, so why can’t you transform the land to be suitable for living for centuries?”
“Swamps can be filled in, and trees can grow in the desert. You can summon fire, you can gather rain clouds, you can do these things with ease. But you just call these abilities combat-type powers, bent on robbing other people’s homes.”
Eno rubbed 588’s head and gave her a kiss on her soft cheek: “Only flowers that you grow yourself look the best. You can have this pot of flowers, go ahead.”
With that he stood up and walked off into the distance without looking back. Drake was waiting for them there with a large force, and they would travel all the way to the edge of the frozen forest to go back on board a Silver Cross legion warship that had stopped there. Drake was half leaning on the back of a chair, his arm was still bandaged and he cried out in pain at Eno’s touch.
Eno’s face really showed concern and asked guiltily: “It still hurts ah?”
“Hurts.” Drake huffed in style and held his arms out to him bitterly, “Come and hug.”
Eno looked at him suspiciously, but got into Drake’s arms and rubbed against him intimately for a moment. Then he grabbed Drake’s arm when he wasn’t looking, and in three quick strokes, removed the bandage, revealing the lean, intact white skin inside.
“……”
Without another word, Eno got off Drake and shrank to the other corner of the seat. Drake snapped over to him and put his arm around him coaxingly: “I’m just trying to get you to love me more, you have been unhappy to talk to me these days.”
“Not ignoring you.” Eno said sullenly, “I just…don’t know how to face you.”
Drake immediately said: “Then I’ll haunt you every day until you get used to me.”
Eno laughed wordlessly and leaned against Drake’s warm, thick chest. Drake pushed his luck, his thin and powerful arms crossed his chest, and he swept up the thin shirt under the brown trench coat and gently rubbed it on his smooth and slightly convex belly. As if sensing his father’s affection, the baby gave his belly a gentle kick and interacted happily with Drake.
Eno didn’t bother the intimate father and son, he was a little drowsy from the touch, when he suddenly heard a loud, earth-shattering noise behind him. Eno was startled, and all he could see through the back window was a white mist so dense that he couldn’t even see the frozen forest in the distance.
“Detonated a couple of bombs.” Drake explained, “The whole base wasn’t easy to blow up because of the special building materials, so it’s better to have an avalanche and bury the base. Anyway, the inside has been emptied.”
Soon after the white snow condensed into ice, all the greed and sins will be covered up underground from then on, never to be known again.
Eno was too sleepy afterwards and literally fell into Drake’s arms and slept peacefully. When he woke up, he had arrived at the warship, and he and Drake immediately set off in the ship, and followed the fast track all the way to Capital Star to report.
They met the council president and Grey on the Capital Star. The four men sat down at the conference table and Drake gave a brief description of what they had done on the base, then submitted a full written report for filing, along with the silver suitcase that Eno had snatched up.
The council president, a lean looking Alpha in his fifties, took the suitcase and did not open it, but handed it to his secretary: “Take it and destroy it, don’t let anyone know.”
The secretary nodded in agreement and took the case out of the room. Only then did the council president turn his head to face the three of them, his weathered face full of the vicissitudes of the years, which brought out the wisdom in his eyes: “A society must allow the weak to survive, otherwise the seeds of suspicion will be planted in the hearts of every citizen. They will wonder what the state will do to me if I am one day sick and disabled and no longer useful to it. What will the state do to my children if they are born with inferior genes? Trust is the foundation of a solid society, and if we take advantage of the weak, we are destroying our society at its roots. So I promise you that this Omega physique enhancement programme will disappear forever and all Omegas can live in the Federation in peace. The Inhumans should also be greatly wounded after this base incident, and during the time when we all recuperate from each other, I will continue discussions with the council and once again consider repealing the wartime Omega Distribution Act.”
“Drake, your actions this time have been fruitful, but not honourable enough.” The council president looked at him with approval and a hidden rebuke, “You will not be rewarded with a promotion or merit points, but I have conferred with the mastermind, who has agreed to exchange those merit points you paid when you requested not to marry Omega, plus all your current merit points, for Eno’s free citizenship. You will become his special guardian and will need to submit reports on time to prove that he has no tendency to reoffend.”
The council president said and his tone became joking: “You can apply to marry Eno and go home if you work hard to earn more merit points, or wait for next year’s allocation if you don’t have enough. Anyway, you two are such a good genetic match, let the mastermind save it for you, anyone who wants to steal it from you can, you can go to the door and fight him one on one.”
Drake was shocked: “That stupid…wise and powerful mastermind is so nice this time?”
The council president got up, smiled and patted Drake’s shoulder, “Haven’t you noticed, it’s always been very nice to you. When you applied to become a bachelor, it happily sent me several strings of ying ying ying1sound of crying.”
He walked out of the conference room, his words of wisdom echoing around the conference table before he left: “You’re a Federation man, the Mastermind even asked me for your autographed photo for an electronic scan.”
Drake was dumbfounded: “Isn’t the Mastermind’s proposed personality a cold, ruthless Alpha?!”
The council president supposedly walked away, leaving only a distant voice: “What’s wrong with Alpha? Can’t Alpha have a little O heart!”
Drake was dazed until he walked out of the council chambers and Eno tugged on his sleeve and asked in a whisper: “Is it really going to be alright? You did something that big without applying, or within the Inhuman starfield……”
“It’s fine.” Drake patted his hand and reassured, “The Inhuman royal family wouldn’t dare to make a sound about this matter. Like the council president said, if they come after me blatantly, they will only put their own people in greater panic. So they can only swallow this dumb loss. As a human being, sometimes you don’t have to be so open and honest.”
Eno muttered: “You guys are really……”
Drake laughed twice and took Eno’s hand in his and strode into the afterglow of the setting sun.
The fall of the Kersi family triggered a new round of purges in the upper echelons of the Federation. The base incident was only an insignificant trigger in the whole round of power purge, and the huge interests involved behind it were what the bigwigs like Grey had to worry about. The real brutal battleground is just beginning, but it’s no longer Drake’s concern.
He picked a sunny day to take Eno to the central cemetery of capital star, where Lea and Allie’s graves are located, and where Drake later decided to move Ivan’s grave to be buried with his long-lost wife and son.
Drake came here every year to see Lea, and when he was away, he sent a small amount of money to the gravekeeper by post, asking him to sweep the dust off the headstone and place a fresh bouquet of white chrysanthemums in front of it every day. Nine years later, the three headstones are still as shiny as ever.
Drake stood silently in front of the monument for a long time before saying: “The fire burned too much to distinguish the names of the bones, so I just picked up a few of their belongings for the graves.”
“I found a metal square box with a very high ignition point inside the ruins, but the electronic lock was burnt out. Inside were two thousand paper cranes, two ragdoll cats, two four-wheel drive vehicles and a letter.” Drake’s voice was heavy, “The letter was from me to Lea, so I buried the square box here with my medals.”
Eno wiped his eyes and choked back a sob: “The thousand paper cranes is what I taught him to fold when he was six, the ragdoll cats we bought on the way to the playground together when he was nine, and the four-wheel drive I made for him when he was ten.”
Eno pulled an Iris envelope from his pocket, so crumpled it was barely visible, and smoothed it down hard to place it in front of the tablet. He whispered: “I have the same box, bought on the side of the road when we first went to school together. Lea said we should both put our most precious memories in it and wait until ten or twenty years later to take it out and look at it again……My box only contains this envelope. I’m sorry for stealing from you and Lea.”
Because everything was given to Lea, he only kept the box. Love for Lea was the side of him that was righteous, and Drake was the feeling he thought would be buried deep forever. The square box held the joys and sorrows of his life, inside and out.
Nine years had passed, he had been through thick and thin, and had avenged Lea himself, but now he stood here and felt as if it had all been yesterday, and Lea still smiled at him, clamouring loudly to move to York to be with him.
And yet his younger brother was forever stuck at nineteen, dormant in the dark, cold underground at a flowery age, with all the illusions of a better future, but by accident, he and Drake were fulfilled.
Drake half-crouched beside Eno, stroking him down his spine, again and again. There was so much he wanted to say to Lea, but when he came to it, he couldn’t say anything. He still loved Lea to this day, but he couldn’t deny that those once passionate and sincere feelings had faded with the passage of time because of the lack of the other person to maintain them, and finally sank quietly into the bottom of his heart, never making a ripple again.
If he hadn’t met Eno, this might have been the end of his life, but this was his life. The fact is that he met an Omega that made him want to be born again, no matter who he was, he was just an Omega that awakened his dormant heart, giving him the desire to love again.
He doesn’t ask for Lea’s forgiveness, no one in this world is qualified to forgive him in Lea’s place. He has no guilt and no regrets. He had to say goodbye to his past here and then go and embrace his future.
Eno cried until sunrise, when he finally stood up through Drake’s strength. He could barely stand, but firmly pushed Drake away and said hoarsely to Lea’s tombstone” “Lea, I’m sorry. But Ge Ge wanted happiness so badly.”
“I’m sorry. I don’t want to let go anymore.”
Drake watched in a daze as Eno turned towards him and placed his soft hand into his palm.
The air of the cemetery was mingled with the fragrance of the earth after the rain, and they walked hand in hand through the towering lush green fir trees in the direction of the gate.
That is the direction of their new home.
–END–
melon: It’s the end of the main story guys!~ 😭
Hope you enjoyed it but don’t go yet! There’s still 2 more extra chapters, stay tuned!~
