It was two days before Gar came to see her. By then Sarah had explored the spacious house, a long hallway running East to West with rooms of various sizes. There was a fully stocked kitchen, though most of the food was unrecognizable to her. She had found a bowl of pink-skinned fruits she had fallen in love, eating one with every meal. The flesh was sweeter and more delicious than any fruit she had ever tasted on Earth.

There was a master bedroom with a massive circular bed and a bathroom attached; the tub nearly five feet deep and set into the floor, making baths a relaxing affair.

But still, she was ready to go. She missed her father and thought about him nearly every moment she was awake, and twice, once on the first night and the next day during a nap, dreamt of him when she slept. She found she was tired often, and wondered if the atmosphere was different from Earth’s.

It was just after lunch; she had eaten one of the pink fruits and a bowl of stew, or at least she thought it looked and tasted a bit like stew after discovering it in the refrigerator, which more or less resembled one of the appliances from her home, when a soft bell dinged throughout the house. It took her a moment to place it as the doorbell, and she went to answer, wondering if she should go dress quickly, she was wearing an undershirt and her panties.

Screw it. Let them get excited.

But when she pulled the door open, Gar was there. She felt her cheeks go hot, which was certainly odd since he had seen her in her underwear more than once, and just as often out of them all together.

“I could come back,” he said, clearly embarrassed as well, which only served to make Sarah’s resolve strengthen. He was embarrassed to see her nearly nude? Good.

Again, she wondered just why she was so mad at the alien, but she couldn’t quite figure it out. And she wasn’t sure she wanted to. She didn’t devote any brainpower to the problem as she stepped back to let him in. She glanced down, noticing for the first time that day that her nipples were clearly visible through the shirt, dark spots under the thin white material.

“What do you want?” she asked.

If Gar had been hoping she would be kind, or even act excited to see him, he was mistaken and disappointed. His face fell as he shut the door behind him, lest the two guards glance in and saw her breasts or panty-clad ass.

“I came to check on you,” the alien she had fallen for said. She felt a pang of that same attraction as he spoke. She had him, or had for most of the crazy adventure, to lean on when things had gotten too crazy. She had been ripped from her home, and not just her home but her home world, and had been forced into something she honestly didn’t even understand. She had never been alone though, save a few horrific weeks when the Aeon’s had made her their captive. Gar had been there. And in that house she felt lonely, and she felt scared, but seeing him, she realized she didn’t have to feel that way at all.

“I’m fine,” she said, not as frostily as before. “I'm tired, Gar.”

“I know,” he said, nodding. He was wearing a uniform, light green with stripes of brown down the sleeves. His shoulders and chest were broad, as she had known, and they made him look impressive in the crisp lines of the outfit. He wore a hat as well, triangular and jauntily placed upon his head, but he reached up and pulled that off, setting it down upon a nearby table. “Tomorrow you begin training,” he said.

“Training?” Sarah asked.

Gar nodded. “If you’re going to do this, you need to learn how to stay alive.”

Sarah felt annoyed, but she knew he hadn’t meant it the way she had taken it. Still, she couldn’t keep herself from replying.

“Well, I’ve managed it this long, have I not?”

Gar smiled. “Yes, you have,” he said. “Still, this isn’t going to be like it has been so far. This time, we aren’t trying to run from danger. We aren’t just trying to survive. We’re going to march into danger, and we think it would be… uh… beneficial to you if we trained you. Taught you how to use a gun. Things like that.”

Sarah knew better than to argue. Everything Gar was saying seemed like a good idea. She should be trained. If she was going to go to the Aeon home world in an effort to end this once and for all, she would need to be able to handle herself when she got there.

“Okay,” she said finally, nodding her head.

“Okay?”

“Yes,” she said.

“And then,” Gar added, his voice softer than she had ever heard it, his tone full of uncertainty, “you’ll go back home?”

“Yes.” she said, trying to put a sense of finality into her words, but surprising herself when her voice was as soft and unsure as his had been. “I have to go home. Right? I have to… go home.”

“Right,” Gar said, nodding softly, and suddenly it didn’t matter that she was in her underwear, it didn’t matter that he could see the dark shade of her nipples. There was nothing sexy there, nothing teasing, no awkwardness. It was just loss; heavy and awful, hanging in the air between them. They had loved, and whatever was happening now, they were still in love, but she didn’t belong there, not on that planet, and he surely didn’t belong on hers.

They stood for some time in silence, just inside the front door, neither willing to be the first to speak, mostly because neither knew what else could be said in that moment. It had run its course, hadn’t it? They were going to train her, she would learn how to kill, or at least how to survive, and then, if she was lucky, she would win and she would be sent home. She wasn’t meant for the stars.

It was Sarah who finally broke the silence.

“Will you be there? At training?”

“Yes,” Gar said.

“Good,” she said, and smiled. He returned it, but neither of their smiles had much warmth or happiness in them. Slowly, he reached up, placing his hat atop his head, and turned to pull open the door.

“I’ll come by in the morning,” he said. “Can you read the clocks here?”

The numbers looked different, of course, and Sarah was pretty sure they had eighteen hours in the day instead of twenty-four, but she was confident she had figured out the basics.

“I think so,” she replied with a slight smirk. Gar laughed softly, and for a moment it almost felt like it had been for the past couple of months.

“Six,” he said. “In the morning.”

Of course, he hadn’t actually said six, that was what the earpiece had translated, and Sarah nodded.

“I’ll be ready,” she said, and then added with a wink. “Hopefully.”

“All right,” Gar said and sighed slightly. He turned and stepped through the open door, pulling it shut behind him.

Sarah stared at the closed door for a long time, trying to fight back tears.