unrelinquished

"Maya," he says, in a voice like spilling sand, "please, let go."

She frowns, twisting the nozzle on the tube that feeds his centuries-too-old stomach, just below the device that powers his lungs. "Is it the scenery? I can change that. I know there's not much variety, but I've been working on installing new projector windows, and they're pretty much indistinguishable from the real deal."

He cannot shake his head, but the gesture is implied. "That's not what I mean, and you know it."

"If I zap you a little, with the electrodes, I could remove your sense of place, so it would feel real," she offers, ignoring him. "You wouldn't be able to tell."

"I don't want scenery, Maya. I want to be done. "

She finishes with the feeding tube, and moves on to the filtration system. "I could just do it for you, I guess. Might be simpler that way."

"It wouldn't make a difference."

"Of course it would," Maya says, frowning. "Humans respond much better to calming and organic scenery. That's what the windows are for. Because you need to see things other than space, sometimes. Wouldn't want you going batty just because you didn't get to see a tree every once in a while!"

"Maya, please. You and I both know this isn't going to last."

The blood in his veins stings more than usual, like too much fluid in too little skin. He's decaying, and she knows it, but for all her lack of squeamishness, she averts her eyes every time.

"You're wrong. We've talked about this. I can make it last."

"I'm going to die, and it gets sooner every cycle. You're not helping me anymore," he rasps. "It hurts, Maya. Everything about this. It hurts."

"If it hurt, you should have said so, silly," she tells him, in a tone sliding back to scolding's comfortable domain. "Painkillers are easy. I can just up the dosage if that's all you need." She pauses, thoughtful. "In fact, that might help with the depression, too, if you're a little less aware. Two birds in one stone, or whatever you called it."

"It's not depression," he tells her. "It's nature."

He knows it's futile.

Her alien kind carries the eternal youth of jellies and axolotls, and they know no death but by killing. He should have expected her to take loss poorly. The look in her eyes when her adoptive mother, his dear Anna, passed away should have warned him.

"I know, Dad," she says. "But it's not a death sentence. You told me that. You're feeling this way because your brain is flawed and doesn't know how to handle a longer lifespan, but the drugs will help, I promise."

"Maya," he pleads, one more time. She doesn't answer. The daily rush of painkillers enters his system a moment later, and the world starts to swim with a bleary, wordless bliss.

The bitter taste of eternity lingers underneath. He has no words now, to speak of it.

"I love you," says Maya.

He can't help it. For all the pain, she's his daughter, through and through. "I love you, too."

She shuts the door behind her, and he watches unfamiliar fields of stars pass by. One day, he prays, she'll learn.

(Deep down, he knows, she won't.)