Chapter 30 #2
“No reason,” he said, dropping the grin to something forcefully neutral.
“I thought they were gods too when they showed up on Zircon and forced Gehenna from the station. I was only eight—errr, nine, I mean. Nine. I was nine when they showed up, and didn’t have much of a sense of what was real and what was myth.
” He shoved his hands in his pockets and broke eye contact.
“It didn’t take long to figure out that gods weren’t real, and we were on our own though. ”
These were the little things he said that kept drawing me in, and I couldn’t seem to ignore the implications.
The small, dark admissions that felt like something I might have said myself.
Which was the only explanation for why I asked: “How’d you avoid the foster system for so long?
I could see making it a year or two, but from the time you were nine until adulthood?
” It had been eating at me since our first real conversation.
In Mictlan, immediately following the war, they’d rounded up the orphaned children who didn’t have any family to fall back on using armed guards who didn’t take ‘no’ for an answer.
I’d been running loose a solid year before then, but I wasn’t able to stay under the radar anymore during the sweep.
Granted, most of the kids in my neighborhood weren’t the types to do anything quietly or legally, and asking us to come with them nicely wouldn’t have worked. They had to use force if they wanted us to get in line.
I caught myself rubbing my wrist like a nervous tick, then I shoved my hands in my pockets to stop myself.
“My parents had a hidden bunker.” His expression dropped to something much more serious.
“My… sister and I hid in the bunker during the attack until it was safe, and we hid in it again when they started doing the rounds to retrieve the strays.” He shrunk away as he spoke.
“We still showed up at school, and we had a neighbor who helped us here and there with getting assistance, so it kept questions about our home life at bay. It took a while before Zircon was fully assimilated into Mictlan, so it was easy to slip through the cracks.”
“Why though? Why not just let them take care of you or get adopted? Wouldn’t that have been easier?” I knew the answer to that question, but did he?
“I just… didn’t trust it. A lot of the kids we went to school with were adopted, and they seemed fine enough, but I didn’t want to risk being split up from my sister.
” He seemed to hitch slightly every time he mentioned his sister, and I chose not to press on that, because I wasn’t a fucking monster.
“I met a lot of people who got separated, and it wasn’t worth it when we could get by on our own.
We just had to make it the ten years until we were both in adulthood, then once we both got into Medella, it got a lot easier. ”
“I see.” They both got into Medella? My own curiosity won out over my need to torment him, at least for the moment. “I’m guessing that’s how you actually learned to fight.”
“Oh.” He was completely taken aback, eyes wide and somehow managing to blanch even whiter. “I mean, I had to survive, and sometimes getting enough food for both of us meant… surviving against others. But, I definitely took it seriously when we were issued mandated training from Mictlan—“
“No you didn’t.” I scoffed. Don’t feed me bullshit.
“Even if I completely ignore your lack of muscle, you don’t follow a single fucking rule that they teach.
Your fighting style is the kind that tries to mimic the real thing, like a kid who watched a few too many martial art movies and thought they’d become a kung fu master when they punched a stick in half, without understanding the fundamentals.
It doesn’t have an ounce of the refinement or discipline of anyone forced into that program.
Did you avoid the training sessions by hiding in that bunker, too?
” I wasn’t trying to antagonize him today, but every little half-truth was getting under my skin.
I fucking hated it when people lied to me.
“How long did you get away with that shit? Because hiding wasn’t an option here. ”
“N-no, I…” He took a step away from me and swallowed heavily. “I just…” Another step. There wasn’t much more room to retreat, but the fear in his reaction was disproportionate to the question. It wasn’t like I was going to turn him in as a fraud. I just wanted to know who the hell he actually was.
I gave him a few seconds to come up with some way to explain it, but I really didn’t care that he hadn’t followed the rules.
He wouldn’t have beaten me if he had. This reaction was simply too extreme to be a case where he dodged obligations and was ashamed of it.
There was something more here. “How old is your sister?”
“Sh-she’s…” One more step, and his heel was at the edge of the platform. Fuck, he was legitimately terrified. That was interesting. “She’s twenty-one.”
“Married? Matchmaking? Dead?” Okay, maybe I was a monster, because I didn’t want to ignore and dance around the subject anymore.
“Think I’d find her if I looked through the matching module?
” I activated the display on my CHRONO. “As a soldier, they give us access to any planet and any station within Mictlan to browse for matches. I’m sure she won’t be that hard to find. ”
Oh, now that look? That was real fear. Very, very interesting.
“She’s dead. Her name was on the death toll after the attack on 005,” he said, with a panicked haste that was highly suspect.
Not the least of which because it lacked any sort of hurt, anger, or devastation.
It wasn’t the level of anguish someone who lost their only cherished, living relative would exhibit, in my opinion.
Not if they were that close. He must have developed some weird sister complex having protected her all those years.
“Really? But if she was twenty-one, she must have had a profile already. I’m sure they haven’t wiped it yet.
” I opened the module just to provoke him.
I refused to register for such a dehumanizing program, so the mandated module just opened to a sign up page, but he didn’t need to know that.
“I’m just curious. If you’re this small, your sister must have been space dust. Does she look like you? I bet she’s cute.”
He grabbed my hand suddenly and without warning, then attempted to yank my CHRONO from my wrist, only to instead throw us both off balance and send us toppling over the side of the platform.
We were five feet off the walkway, about to crash down with enough momentum and force to kill someone if they landed at the wrong angle.
It was only by my quick instincts that I managed to get my hand behind his head and hug him into my chest to cushion his fall before he could hit the metal and split his skull.
I landed on my shoulder, then my back, with him on top of me, our legs tangled together, and his forehead hitting into mine, doing damage to both of us despite my best efforts.
His fingers were still digging into my shirt, and I still had my arms protectively wrapped around him while those colorless eyes stared into mine, too close to look away.
Flecks of silver sparkled in his crystalline irises, and they were unexpectedly vibrant and alive when you really looked at them.
His breathing was quick and unsteady, warming my lips in small panicked bursts, and he was so damn small on top of me.
I couldn’t say how long we remained in that position, but however many seconds or minutes or hours or eternity passed, it was entirely too many.
“Can you move?” I’d unwrapped my arms from around his back, and he finally realized I wasn’t just lingering for the intimacy.
He let go of my shirt, and tried to push himself up and off of me, but he made it about half an inch before he winced and grabbed his ribs again.
Fucking baby.
I pushed him off of me, purposely putting pressure on his bad side, and rolling him to the metal pathway with a small thunk, then I sat up and got back on my feet. I offered a hand, though he hesitated to take it,
“We’ve got to stop ending up like that, or people are going to start to talk.” I rubbed the back of my neck, until my heart rate started to steady. Why didn’t it ever just feel like a fight when he was on top of me?
“Please don’t look into my sister,” he said, his head hanging low like he was trying to hide his face behind his too short hair.
“I’ve done a lot to protect her from this.
I can’t risk anything happening to her when I’m not there to make it right.
Please. You can do whatever you want to me, but don’t involve her. ”
If I didn’t know better, which, honestly I didn’t, I might have thought he was on the verge of crying.
“So she’s not dead.”
Vann looked up at me, that panic still in his glossed over eyes. “N-no. But it’s easier for everyone involved if they think she is,” he admitted, probably because he knew I would figure it out if he tried to lie about it again. “Please just… leave it.”
I shook a hand through my hair. The irony was that you couldn’t force me to sign up for the match system if you tried, and I’d actually brought him in here because I wanted to see if he could sync with Lamassu like he could sync in VR, but now I learned something I wasn’t sure I wanted to know.
It seemed like nothing ever went how I hoped it would go around Vann.
“Is she… hiding from the matchmaker?” I didn’t know why I wanted to know, but that reaction wasn’t one of an honest, law abiding citizen doing nothing wrong.
He fidgeted uncomfortably on his feet. “You don’t know what it’s like for the women who end up in that system. So… so please.” It was an admission without the words, but the implication was clear.
But he was wrong about one thing. I had a painfully good idea of what happened to anyone who ended up in the system.
“Fucking hell, calm down. I’ll leave it.
I know how important it is to protect the women in our lives, I promise.
” And I know how devastating it is to fail at it.
“I’m not over here trying to get my dick wet and start a family anyway.
I don’t even want to imagine dealing with a female version of you.
” The thought sent a shiver down my spine.
A female Vann was the nightmare I didn’t need.
She probably was cute though. It was disturbing how easy it was to imagine while looking at him.
He was petite, soft, delicate—If I’d never seen him shirtless, I might have mistook him for a girl in the first place.
That said… “But it’s going to be on one condition.
” Because what kind of a fool would I be if I didn’t take advantage of this opportunity?
“You can have your room back. I’ll find somewhere else to sleep.” He immediately agreed on a completely wrong assumption. I shook my head
“That’s great, but no. That’s not what I want.” My snide grin was accidental.
“I’ll do anything.” He was way too quick to put himself in that kind of position, because I could think of a lot of things right now that he would not want to do, and I was not going to elaborate even in my own headspace on why my mind was wandering in that direction at all.
“I haven’t decided yet. So let’s just say you’ll owe me a favor, redeemable when I want it, and how I want it. No questions, no snark.”
“Done.” He extended a hand to make it official, and I gave it a good firm shake.
He had no idea the power he just gave me.
Blackmail was a beautiful thing.
“Now, if we could just—” I started to speak, but before I had the chance get back to the whole damn point of bringing him here, I was interrupted by a set of striking violet eyes and pitch black hair.
“What are you doing?” Seba asked, his head tipped slightly to the side in confusion as he looked between the two of us. He was dressed in his coveralls, with his hair still messy from his extracurricular sparring session.
Right, we’d set up a wrenching session today. I’d nearly forgotten in light of… everything else.
“Fancy meeting you here, Pipsqueak.” Breaker followed closely behind, with his coveralls half undone and tied around his waist, revealing a white undershirt that was permanently stained by grease.
He rested a massive wrench over his shoulder.
“Is this part of the training routine now, Firefly? Getting hands on with the cadets?”
Fucking Breaker.
“Uh, I…” I cleared my throat, not trying to come off as guilty of anything, because this was a completely innocent attempt to push Vann’s training along.
Probably. “He’s almost made rank, so I thought it would be good to show him what was possible once he has his own Shinka. ” That wasn’t entirely a lie. Sort of.
Debatably.
“Is that right?” Breaker wore that trademark grin that I wanted to punch off his face.
“Unauthorized personnel shouldn’t be in the maintenance bay.” Seba, my always perfect and to-the-letter-of-the-law friend, pointed out with a hint of well-disguised irritation. I couldn’t say which of us that was directed at, but I could guess it was most likely me.
“I promise I’m supervising. It’s fine.” I waved a hand dismissively, while Vann was shrinking away, looking like he’d just been caught red handed.
Breaker was, predictably, living for the awkwardness of the whole situation.
Whatever he was coming up with in his head was wrong.
“Well, since you’re supervising, let’s get to work.
Kishi needs someone to grease all his zerks, and Vann has small enough hands that he can probably fit in the places I can’t. ”
“I’d love to help,” Vann announced before flitting over to Breaker’s side like a scared little bird. “J-just lead the way. I’m great at greasing zerks.”
With that, Breaker headed over to his Shinka, positioned just a couple of rows over, and Vann tagged along obediently. My expression flattened, irritated that everything I came here for was completely ruined.
“Care to explain?” Seba asked, while both of us watched Breaker showing Vann how the mobile maintenance platforms worked.
“I’d rather not, honestly.” I sighed. “Let’s get to work.”