Chapter 25 Community #2
He’s the only one who hasn’t looked at me like I’ve betrayed him, but his body language gives away his disappointment.
His arms are crossed and his expression blank, which is as good as a condemnation.
The last thing I expected to face when I boarded the Homebound was all of my old crew with accusatory eyes.
“I wasn’t trying to hide it from you; I just didn’t want to drag you into this mess.”
“What mess?” Beau asks. “This have anything to do with what that old bitch said on the ship? About Marlowe?”
A sigh loosens my lips. “I bought the Homebound so I could get Marlowe and Vee away from Mars before Gryphon could get his hands on them.”
The confusion ripples from one end of the galley to the other, and five faces stare back at me with bemusement.
“We know he’s a dick but...” Khrys says.
I tell them the truth and carefully watch the range of emotions bloom in response to Gryphon’s crimes.
“Are you fucking kidding me?” Beau demands. Uncharacteristically, there’s no trace of humour in their voice or their face. “You should have told us.”
“His own son,” Maximus mutters.
“Marlowe is such a fucking badass,” Khrys says in wonder.
I clear my throat, trying not to drown in the multiple conversations starting around the room. “As long as you didn’t know, you had plausible deniability. It was for your own good.”
“So you bought a ship overnight to squirrel them away from Dominik? Gryphon?” Devyaan asks.
When he puts it like that, it sounds incredibly stupid. I shrug, because that is what I did. His expression softens then, and it’s too knowing, and it cuts me to the quick. “And she went anyway,” he says, not unkindly.
There’s nothing to reply to. What is there to say? Marlowe’s not here, and we are.
Khrys slaps me then, a flat hand right across my shoulder. “You were going to leave us?”
I wince and eye her coffee, wishing she’d finish it and sober up. “As opposed to what?”
“We’re your crew!”
“On the Midas...” I say slowly, wondering if that might help the words get through her alcoholic haze.
“Not anymore,” Beau admits.
“He fired you?”
“Well, not us, because we don’t work for him,” Maximus chirps. I think he’s trying to lighten the mood, but it falls flat.
Dismay grips me. I look at them, expecting to see bitterness or something that might eviscerate me—as fragile as I feel right now—but I don’t find it.
“At least Mabel and Chen escaped the culling,” Khrys snorts.
The two remaining members of the Midas crew, likely thanking their stars for Dominik’s hubris. I shake my head. “Why don’t any of you look angry?”
Devyaan shrugs, his arms now hanging by his sides, palms open. “Should we want to work for a man who would resort to abduction?”
“Fine, but what are you all going to do now?” I ask, exasperated.
A silence falls over the galley. Dread simmers in my gut. The entire crew suddenly look very shifty. I shake my head. “No.”
Beau finally smiles, baring all those white teeth. “Hi, Cap.”
This forces me to my feet, overcome with a panic I’ve never felt in my life.
“No. No. This is not a fully functioning ship. I don’t even know where anything is yet.
Who’s going to pay you?” My voice climbs octaves.
I turn to the Archival brothers. “And why are you here? You don’t know how to work on a ship. What am I supposed to do with you?”
It’s Devyaan who takes hold of me, hands on either side of my face, cool against my burning cheeks.
He forces me to make eye contact and then smiles gently.
“You’re the only one here who doesn’t have faith in you.
We’re your crew. This is happening. And we have nothing to lose, kulari.
We can look for jobs whilst working on the Homebound, and if it doesn’t drum up enough business in the meantime, no harm done. ”
I stare into his warm eyes, absorbing his words, and manage a pathetic laugh. “You don’t even know what the job is.”
Beau kicks their feet up on the table, and Khrys knocks them right back off again. They pout at her, before hiking two thumbs up in my direction. “As long as it’s not human trafficking, who cares?”
I swear my vision goes black for a second.
Beau didn’t know—couldn’t have known—how that comment would land, but it takes all the wind out of my sails.
I drop onto a seat before I can fall, burying my head into my hands.
Chei. I have to tell the crew. If they’re going to trust in me like this, I have to give them the full story first. The familiar throb of anxiety in my stomach reminds me of spilling my guts for Marlowe, of telling her my greatest shame and hoping she wouldn’t hate me for it.
She listened, when I feared that no one would.
I have been here before, and it wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be.
Perhaps I should trust in community.
“What’s wrong?” Devyaan asks.
Before I cut myself open again, I force myself to glance at the brothers. Julian looks uncomfortable, but Maximus is waiting expectantly, his upbringing visible in every straight line of his posture.
“Are you both angling to be on the crew, too?”
Maximus shrugs his shoulders. “Perhaps not long term but seeing as we are all fleeing from powerful men, I think we’d do well to stick together. Don’t you?”
Julian scoffs. “You’re so full of shit.” But he’s smiling, his love for his brother clear to see. On his home planet, he’s visibly more relaxed.
“Okay.” I take a deep breath. “Before you all decide, there’s something you should know.”
Still, I hesitate. It feels easier to line up in my head.
But it’s an acidic truth that gnaws at me, and I can’t keep waiting for the day when it no longer burns.
It will always burn. But baring my soul to Marlowe was like seeing sunlight for the first time.
She thought I was worth forgiveness. I have to believe that of myself.
As I tell the crew about my time on the Raat-Sarpa, all traces of amusement in the room withers.
By the end of the story, I’ve dropped my gaze to my hands, folded on the table in front of me and clasped so hard the knuckles are white.
They’re all I can bear to look at in the stifling silence of the galley.
I can hear my heart pounding away, chipping at my ribcage like a pickaxe.
Then a hand tucks itself under my chin and forces me to lift my head, dragging me out of the pit I was slowly sinking into.
Khrys hugs me, and it must be like hugging a statue because I’m frozen in place.
It’s the only way I can keep my body from shattering into so many, pathetic pieces.
Relief and stoicism are all that holds me together right now.
The crew aren’t disgusted, or disappointed, or even angry.
Over the evening, none of their negative emotions—and there are many—are directed at me.
They don’t hesitate to rip into my old crew.
I’m bolstered by their comments, not flayed by them.
A long discussion follows, and by the end of it, I feel boneless.
They don’t think I’m a monster. I now have a ship and a team of people who believe in me.
What I don’t have is Marlowe and Vee. I think this is a hurt that’s going to take me a very long time to heal.
In the middle of a tangential conversation, Beau suddenly pops their head up, eyes wide. “Wait.”
My heart clenches. “What?”
“Dibs on the second biggest cabin!”
And then they fling themselves away from the table and take off into the hallways of the ship.
The rest of the crew take off behind Beau, yelling and cackling, even the Archival brothers—Julian pulling Maximus along—in a manner so unbecoming of them I can only stare.
Within seconds, the room is empty except for me and Devyaan.
We share a laugh as he pulls up a chair.
“Linashae Tharzal? Really?” he quirks an eyebrow.
I stare. “You watch Zhaarn tala Ruya?”
Under the Red Sun is a poorly made soap opera, but it’s the only one ever produced in Suryavana and therefore has a cult following, though it’s mostly the older generation who watched it. Linashae Tharzal was a matriarch in the reigning family and my Nayya’s favourite character.
Devyaan has the decency to look mildly embarrassed. “It has its good moments.”
I shake my head, but I’m pleasantly surprised.
I’ve used this identity elsewhere but never here, for obvious reasons.
I only decided to use it in Suryavana this time because we’re more generous when we recognise a native, and that burner was as native as it gets.
With a Tellurian name, I’d have been charged significantly more for the Homebound.
He sobers, and I feel his eyes on me like a probe—gentle, but probing nonetheless. “So… Marlowe and Vee left.”
Devyaan is incredibly intuitive and observant. I think he’s the most intelligent person I know, which means when he decides to try and cut my emotions out of me, it’s with surgical precision. I look away. “Let’s not.”
“How can I not? You bought a ship for them, kulari. You hide your emotions well, but I see through you. You’re hurting.”
I weigh my words before I speak, because the last thing I want to do is lash out at him.
I know he cares, but right now I wish he weren’t so observant after all.
But it’s just not in our culture to ignore our feelings, which makes this so much more difficult.
What Devyaan is really saying is he thinks I didn’t try hard enough.
“I appreciate that you care, but I don’t want to talk about this. There’s nothing I can do about it. She made her choice, and we have to respect it.”
Devyaan nods, barely, before reaching out and clasping my hand.
“Esh amariyan neva weh,” the bastard says.
So very, very carefully, I get up and leave the room.
I have to, before I fall to pieces on the galley deck.
The day’s events weigh heavily on my body, and it’s like slogging through cement.
My chest hurts again, even though the worst of the night is over and—for the first time in years—I have a promising future to look forward to.
I’ve never wanted to sleep more, where at least in my dreams I might feel weightless.