19. Leaving Home #3
We move through the market level. She stops at the Darjeeling stall—twenty minutes, exactly as Sprout predicted—and purchases a tin that the vendor wraps in paper while telling her she has been gone too long and the good stock almost went to a Corsairian freighter captain with inferior taste.
She introduces me. "This is Xor." No title.
No designation. No qualification. Just my name in her voice in a public market.
The vendor looks up. And up. Takes in the horns, the claws, the tactical gear, the tail currently maintaining a perimeter around Flossie's waist.
"Does he drink tea?"
"He's learning," Flossie says.
"Darjeeling. Second flush. Tell him to brew at 85 degrees, not boiling—if he boils it I'll know.
" The vendor hands me a sample pouch. Small.
Paper. The kind of object that does not exist in SRS operational parameters because SRS does not have tea merchants who give you things because you are standing next to someone they love.
I take the pouch. My claws retract to receive it. The vendor watches the retraction—the same look Flossie gave me the first time, in the cockpit, when I took her mug. The look that sees gentleness and does not announce it.
"He'll do," the vendor says to Flossie. To me: "Break her heart and I'll sell you decaffeinated for the rest of your life."
"That is not a proportionate consequence."
"Lovey," Flossie says, taking my arm, steering me away from the stall before the vendor can escalate, "in this market, decaffeinated is a proportionate consequence."
The bite mark sits above her collar. She has buttoned nothing over it.
Twice between the tea stall and the lift, I watch station acquaintances' eyes find it, register it, flick up to me.
She watches them watch. She does not adjust the cardigan.
The not-adjusting is a flag planted in a public corridor, and my biology regards it as the finest thing on this station.
Morrison's office is on Level 4. The door is reinforced polymer with a small plaque that reads DISPATCH—M. MORRISON in lettering that manages to be intimidating despite being 12-point standard.
Flossie stops outside. The transformation is physical—the woman who leans into my tail in public corridors becomes the woman Morrison trained.
Spine straight. Jaw set. The brown eyes going steady and clear.
She rolls her shoulders once. Cracks her neck.
The pre-combat ritual of a woman who learned to fight from the scariest person in the Outer Rim and is about to fight the scariest person in the Outer Rim.
"Twenty-five minutes," she says. "Stay with Sprout. Do not engage until I signal."
"Morrison's left eye twitches before she shouts," Sprout provides from my shoulder. "You have approximately four seconds of warning. I recommend using them to leave the room."
"Thanks, Sprout."
"I was not speaking to you. I was briefing your partner." The orb bobs. "Someone should be prepared."
She hooks one finger in the strap of my gauntlet. Tugs, once—not to move me; nothing moves me—to be felt.
"And lovey. Tonight we own the clock."
Five words. The purr drops half an octave and a passing dock worker looks around for the machinery fault.
She looks at me. Small. Fierce. Certain. The bite mark visible at her collar. The woman who dismantled my framework, my employer, and my entire understanding of what I was built for, all without raising her voice.
"I'll be fine," she says.
"I know."
"If you hear shouting, that's normal. Morrison shouts. It doesn't mean anything."
"I know."
"If you hear crying, that's also normal. That one might be me."
"I will be here."
She reaches up. Her palm flat against my chest—over the marking at my sternum, over the purr. The touch is small and grounding and it says: I am coming back.
She goes inside. The door seals.
I stand in the corridor.
My tail stretches toward the closed door—the tip reaching, straining, as though proximity to the polymer would bring her closer.
The purr has not stopped since we docked.
I cannot make it stop. The bonding frequency fills the corridor with a low, steady vibration that makes the overhead lights hum in sympathy.
A station worker passes. Stares. A seven-foot crimson Xarthian standing outside a dispatch office, purring, tail pointed at the door, claws retracted, gold eyes fixed on reinforced polymer. The universe's most dangerous lost puppy.
"She will be fine," Sprout says. Still at my shoulder.
"I know."
"Morrison loves her. Morrison is incapable of expressing love through any mechanism other than operational infrastructure and occasional violence.
The confrontation will be loud and unpleasant and will end with Morrison helping because Morrison always helps.
This is how their relationship works. It has worked this way for twelve years. I have the data."
"You are attempting to reassure me."
"I am providing contextual data to prevent you from breaching a reinforced door.
The replacement cost would be deducted from Flossie's docking fees and she would be cross, and a cross Flossie is a problem I prefer to manage proactively.
" A pause. "Also: yes. I am attempting to reassure you. Do not make this a habit."
The orb settles into a steady hover at my shoulder. The warm amber glow. The AI that monitors everyone and trusts no one, sitting beside me in a corridor, keeping me company while the woman we both belong to fights a battle neither of us can fight for her.
I wait.
Through the door—muffled, distant, not words but shapes of words—I hear voices. Morrison's, sharp. The pitch rises. Flossie's, steady. Holding ground. The cadence of two women who love each other and are fighting about it.
I could resolve every word. Xarthian hearing does not offer the option of partial listening.
But I am choosing—deliberately, with effort—to hear the shapes rather than the content.
This is her fight. These are her words. The conversation on the other side of that door is between a woman and the person who raised her, and I was not invited, and the not-being-invited is the trust.
Morrison's voice rises. Falls. A silence that stretches long enough that my tail presses harder against the polymer.
Flossie's voice. Steady. Warm. The real warmth—not the performance, not the broker-dismantling register. The underneath thing. She is telling Morrison something true. I can hear the truth in the shape of it even without the words.
Another silence. Longer.
A station maintenance worker walks past for the third time. The third time, he stops. Looks at me. Looks at the door. Looks at my tail pressed against the polymer. Looks at my face.
"You waiting for someone?"
"Yes."
"Morrison's office?"
"Yes."
"Good luck, mate." He walks away shaking his head.
The purr has not stopped. I am standing in a civilian corridor on a space station I have never visited, wearing tactical gear that marks me as something that should not be here, purring at a frequency that makes the overhead lights vibrate, with an AI at my shoulder that is providing unsolicited emotional support while denying that it is providing unsolicited emotional support, and I am waiting for a woman to come out of an office and tell me we can go home.
Home. The word has a shape now. Before her, it had none.
Home was an SRS designation: temporary quarters, rotational assignment, the bunk on whatever vessel was currently transporting me to whatever target was currently assigned.
Home was not a word I used. Home was not a concept the Dens permitted.
Home is currently a ship named after a flower, decorated with fairy lights, crewed by a woman who shoots at two and a half inches and an AI that has migrated from her shoulder to mine.
Home is wherever she is. This is not a tactical assessment.
It is something simpler and larger and I do not have a framework for it and I no longer need one.
I wait. Sprout hovers. The purr fills the corridor.
She is in there. She is fighting. She will come back.
Tonight we own the clock.
I wait.