Chapter 25
ROJA
Weeks crawl by like old ghosts through rusted pipes—quiet, but never still.
The headlines fade faster than I thought they would.
First the cleric’s sentencing, then a few talking heads blathering about justice and oversight like that means anything anymore.
Within ten days, the coverage fizzles out entirely.
You’d think a religious leader exposed for treason and executed would buy more airtime.
But no. News moves on. People move on. Screams become static.
The casino never reopens. Just sits there like a carcass, all flashing signs and broken glamour, cordoned off behind caution tape and denial. I pass it once. Just once. On the long way back from a parts exchange. It smells like ash and perfume. I don’t go near it again.
Then the offer comes.
Old boss from the yards sends a message wrapped in old loyalty codes. Short and formal. "We heard you’re back. Slot’s open. Good pay. Supervisor."
They want me to come home.
I stare at the message for a long time. Then delete it.
Three days later, I send back a single word: “No.”
I’m done building for them. Done pretending I didn’t see what those ships were meant for. Done scraping rust from a war machine and calling it work.
So I take what I can find—grunt jobs. Private contracts. I fix old security systems, reroute wiring, clean grease traps with a hydro-purge unit that rattles my teeth. It’s not noble. It’s not even clean. But it’s mine.
The days get long. My hands stay busy. I lose myself in the grit and the burn of it—because I’ve learned quiet can be a kind of healing, if you let it hurt first.
Every evening, I come back to the same two-room flat on the edge of the district where even the street cams are half-blind. The air always smells like dust and oil. No one checks in. No one knocks.
Kelsea’s almost always on the roof when I get home. She sits with one leg pulled up under her, the other swinging loose over the ledge like she’s got nowhere left to fall. She watches the skyline like it’s keeping secrets. Her eyes don’t blink as much anymore.
“Busy?” she asks one night when I come in with dirt ground so deep into my knuckles it’s turned them black.
“Only with crap work,” I mutter, tossing the tool bag onto the floor.
She snorts. “Better than getting shot.”
“Marginally.”
I flop down beside her on the roof. The metal’s cold through my shirt. She doesn’t move, doesn’t shift, but she glances sideways at me with that quiet little smirk I’ve started living for.
“What?” I ask.
“You stink.”
“Honesty. Nice.”
We fall into a comfortable silence. Below us, the city murmurs without screaming for once. Even the drones have started keeping their distance.
After a while, I say, “They offered me my old job back.”
Her eyes don’t leave the skyline. “Yeah?”
“Turned it down.”
Now she looks at me. “Why?”
“Because I’m not the man they want anymore.”
She nods slowly. “Good.”
“Wasn’t asking for approval.”
“Didn’t give any.”
We both laugh, just a little. It feels weird. Good. Like cracking open a rib cage and finding the heart still beating.
She leans back on her elbows, eyes on the first stars peeking through smog. “You ever think about what comes next?”
“Every day.”
“And?”
“I don’t know.” I scratch at a scab on my wrist. “You?”
She shrugs. “Sometimes I think about a bar. Tiny one. Not in the middle of any damn war zone. Just bottles and stools and people who talk too loud.”
“You’d hate that.”
“Maybe. But I wouldn’t be scared of it.”
I whisper, “I think I could be good at quiet.”
She turns her head toward me. “You are.”
The words settle over me slow and heavy. I close my eyes and let the wind roll over my face. It smells like metal and burnt neon, but there’s a softness under it. Maybe rain. Maybe something better.
We stay there until the lights shut down one by one across the district. No curfew. Just old tech and power saves and nobody caring enough to fix it.
When she yawns and pushes to her feet, I follow.
Back inside, we don’t say much. She changes into one of my old shirts. I pretend not to notice how it fits her better than it ever did me. I clean the worst of the grime from my hands in the kitchen sink. The water’s cold. Always is.
Then she’s on the couch, blanket pulled up to her chin, staring at nothing. I kill the lights and sit on the floor beside her.
Neither of us says goodnight.
Because it’s not goodbye anymore.
Just rest.
Kelsea moves in with a duffel bag full of mismatched clothes and a plastic crate of salvaged tech that rattles like bones in a box every time she shifts it. It’s got wires poking out the sides like they’re reaching for second chances. She says some of it still works. I don’t ask which parts.
First night, she takes the couch. Claims it like a street fighter claims their corner—tight, guarded, half-daring me to push back. I offer her the bed. She laughs like that’s the most ridiculous thing she’s heard in years.
“Don’t get fancy, Roja,” she says, folding a threadbare blanket around her shoulders like armor. “You know what happens when you get used to nice things.”
By the third night, she’s beside me, her back a line of warmth against mine, her breathing slow and shallow, like she’s still listening for the world to fall apart. I match my breaths to hers. And somehow, we both sleep.
She stops dancing like she’s breaking a bad habit. No grand speech. No ceremony. Just one day, the shoes are gone, and the screen where she used to replay old routines goes dark. When I ask, her eyes flick to me, sharp and unreadable.
“Don’t miss it?”
“No one should have to perform to be seen,” she says, voice low. “I’m done letting strangers choreograph my survival.”
After that, she starts cooking. If that’s what you can call it.
The first attempt is some kind of rice-and-bean monstrosity that bubbles like lava and smells vaguely like burned rubber.
She curses in three languages—Coalition Standard, Trivethian, and something I think might be back-alley merchant slang.
She slams the pan down so hard the counter shudders.
I eat every bite.
“You hate it,” she says, crossing her arms.
I swallow, wipe my mouth, and meet her eyes. “It’s terrible. Got seconds?”
She blinks. Then laughs. Really laughs, deep and warm, the kind that scrapes the rust off the inside of your chest.
“You’re such a damn liar.”
“Sure. But I’m your liar.”
Next night it’s fried something—roots or noodles or maybe just scraps she smuggled from the vendor down the block. Whatever it is, it’s better. She doesn’t ask if I like it. She just watches the plate when I eat, eyes soft.
We fall into rhythm. Not a routine. Routines are for people with calendars and paychecks.
What we have is more like a tide. She wakes early, pads barefoot to the window to sip tea so strong it could melt rust. I wake slower, make noise fixing broken things, taking on side jobs no one else wants.
Anything with wiring. Anything with parts that still hum when touched just right.
Sometimes she reads. Sometimes I catch her standing in the middle of the kitchen like she forgot what she came for. Neither of us talks about the cleric. The tribunal. The fire and blood and everything that cracked us open.
It’s not avoidance. It’s survival.
Rain becomes our ritual. When it comes—and it always comes—we climb to the balcony with two mugs of something hot and bitter. We sit, shoulders almost brushing, knees bent, watching the city blur behind sheets of water. No talking. Just the sound of it—soft, endless, honest.
One night, she doesn’t bring tea. Just sits beside me and grabs my hand. Doesn’t look at me. Doesn’t explain. Her fingers thread through mine like she’s latching a lock.
I squeeze back. No words. Just presence.
Inside, life unfolds in pieces. I find one of her earrings in the sink.
A book she’s been reading under my pillow.
She commandeers the left drawer. I stop putting tools in there.
She tapes a photo to the wall—us, backlit, blurry, some street vendor captured us mid-laugh.
I don’t remember laughing that day. But the picture proves I did.
“I’m not going anywhere,” she says one night as we lie in the dark, the hum of old power lines pulsing through the walls. “Just so you know.”
“I know,” I say.
She presses her forehead to my shoulder. “Good.”
She never asks for promises. Doesn’t make any either. But every day she stays, every meal she cooks—burnt or not—is a vow. Every hand she touches to my chest before bed. Every joke she mutters when she thinks I’m not listening.
This, whatever it is—it’s real.