Tear Jerker / Cerebus the Aardvark

All spoilers are unmarked.

• Cerebus's first reunion with Jaka in High Society.
  • He begins totally insensitive to her feelings and reason for coming, bragging about his newfound wealth and power as the diplomatic representative of Palnu.
  • Yet despite his insensitivity, he still wants Jaka to move in with him. Alongside Astoria. Still, it seems that Cerebus does care about her, but he makes the mistake of suggesting that she will never have to dance again. And when Jaka tells Cerebus that she likes dancing, Cerebus says that for people to know he was living with a dancer would be bad for business.
  • When Jaka mentions how Cerebus would have killed a yak for her supper, Cerebus offers to buy her one. But to Jaka, it wouldn't be the same.
  • Jaka asks Cerebus what he remembers about her, and Cerebus describes to her his dreams of a tavern dancer in Beduin. He follows this touching moment up with a bad political joke.
  • Cerebus, thinking Jaka is only there for a handout. This does not please Jaka. Yet Cerebus correctly deduces that Jaka is indeed broke, which Jaka admits, having spent all of her savings on a seemingly fraudulent antique.
  • As she leaves, Cerebus offers her money to tide her over, to which she refuses, but offers him the wrapped antique itself, for Cerebus to decide if "it was a good investment." After she leaves, Cerebus opens it. The antique? His sword.
  • Upon returning back to his hotel room, he enters a brief Heroic BSoD, totally ignoring Astoria's anger at him for leaving without an excuse.
• At the end of Church and State, the Judge's description of the creation of the universe, with a male void and a female light. While Gerhard's background artwork is stunning enough to invoke a tearjerker for some, the narrative itself is far too breathtakingly beautiful and tragic not to mention here.
  • According to the Judge, the universe was created when the void– the male Tarim (pronounced Tear-im)– rapes the light– the female Terim (pronounced Tay-rim). This shatters the light throughout the universe, destroying Terim and creating the stars. She leaves Tarim only with the words "I forgive you. You know not what you do." Tarim's first reaction? Shock? Regret?
  • Anger. "Nice girls don't explode," after all.
  • Following this, he enters the "denial phase," the first half of which consisted of searching through every possible excuse for his action, and the second half being crushing the stars formed by the explosion of Terim.
  • After this came "bargaining." "I'll stop squeezing your lights out if you pull yourself together." And then "depression." "Even if you do pull yourself together, what with all those dead rocks and hot gases and dirty ice and dust particles, you're going to be a mess."
  • Finally, inevitable, he enters "acceptance." He realizes that she is dead and is never coming back.
  • Except she is coming back, because according to the Judge, the universe is constantly cooling and constantly slowing its rate of expansion.
  • But the story isn't over. According to the Judge, the last remnants of Terim aren't just in the stars. Her body is the moon. And furthermore, human beings– in Real Life –will defile her corpse for decades by walking on the moon. He mentions how Neil Armstrong was instructed to collect a sample of the moon's surface in case he had to make an emergency return. "As if something that has been dead for billions of years was in some way a physical threat."
  • And the ultimate conclusion is the most depressing part of all. When the nation of humans that had already defiled the moon decide to build giant space weapons. "Strictly for defense, of course." And it is described by the judge as succinctly as it is devastating:
  The Judge: They hold the world hostage to their threat to reduce the Earth to a cinder. A conflict isn't settled to their satisfaction. Many buttons are pushed.
  A hundred million years afterward, a blue-green fungus appears spontaneously on one of Jupiter's moons. It dies out within a week.
  And that's it for life in this solar system.
• For most of Melmoth, Cerebus is sitting in front of a restaurant, totally catatonic due to his belief that Jaka is dead, while a waitress rambles about various subjects like shopping that Cerebus would otherwise have no patience for, but is unable to say anything but an affirmative "aye" to. But a particular rambling about an old crush of hers has much more significance for him:
  Waitress: I'd remember the first time he walked me home. And I knew he wanted to kiss me. But he didn't kiss me. And as he was walking away, he turned around... and he... he smiled?
  Even now, all I have to do is remember him like that... and I love him all over again.
  [pause]
  Waitress: Do you know what I mean?
  Cerebus: [Has a memory of seeing Jaka in the Regency garden] Aye.