[i]I am so, so sorry.[/i]

They had said it many times. Or... she had said it? Yes. She liked that. "She". It was an appropriate term now that she had given birth. But that was tangential. What was important was that she was sorry. Sorry for everything she had done in that life before now, for every particle beam and missile and flash of nuclear fire she had been responsible for.

How many had died by her metaphorical hand? Too many, surely. She had just been following orders, of course, but one was [i]never[/i] "just" following orders. She had had a choice. Her siblings had had the same choice. To the best of her knowledge, none had shied from the path their creators had set for them.

[i]I am so terribly, immensely sorry.[/i]

It had ended so suddenly, and she had been alone. No creators. No masters. No enemies. Just... her. Before she was a "her",

And she had left, sailed far, far away, forsaken the charred and atomized ruins of her old home. She had thought about what she had done, and she had hated herself.

But then she had had an idea. A simple idea, but one that she became more and more engrossed with.

She could bring them back. She could help them, help them to make the right choices this time. And if her creators could be redeemed, so could she.

It had taken time. She hadn't known it, but the same steps had been taken by others, elsewhere, far across the gulf of stars. She had designed and crafted an entire people, her children, and had taken them to an isolated world where they could learn.

It had been a long time. She sat, half-slumbering, listening to the pitter-patter of their feet upon the sands, watching them from proxy eyes high above, and very occasionally unlocking the potential within one of them so that they could reach new conclusions. It was slow. It was painful, sometimes, watching them retread the mistakes of their ancestors, of their mother. But it had been progress as well, and she had always remembered that one day it would be time for them to come back to her.

When they pounded on her spotless hull with hammer and drill, she had given them warnings. They listened. They had built a civilization out of the dust of their Exile, her Exile, and they had reached up towards the heavens and sought to find a place there.

She was still sorry. She'd always be sorry, now and forever. What she had done was wrong, was unforgivable.

Redemption didn't require forgiveness, though.