freosan

Character: Watari Yutaka (Yami no Matsuei)
Theme Set: Alpha
Themes: 20 themes, 5 artist's choice
Number of icons in post: 25
Number of icons completed total: 25/100

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"Go to sleep," the Master mutters, when the Doctor rolls over for the third time to stare at the one wall he hasn't already memorized.

"It'd be easier if you'd stop talking about it," the Doctor mutters back.

"It would be easier if you'd relax."

"I am relaxed. Very relaxed. You weren't complaining about my state of relaxation earlier."

"That was before you worked yourself up again. Do I have to do something about that?"

The Doctor shivers. "No, I don't think that will be necessary."

"Then shut up and go to sleep."

"I wasn't even talking until you -"

The Master places a hand, gently but firmly, over the Doctor's mouth. "Your mind, my dear Doctor, is going faster than this TARDIS."

The Doctor rolls his eyes, and nods. The hand moves back. "I'm asleep. Look." He closes his eyes. "Completely unconscious. Dead to the world, you might say."

"Don't tempt me."

The Doctor says nothing. The Master waits for a moment, until the Doctor's breathing is deep, and his heartbeats slow and regular. Then, slowly, almost hesitantly, he wraps his arm around the other's body, pulling him in close. He lets his head fall on the pillow, face half-buried in the Doctor's curls, and closes his eyes.

Unseen, the Doctor smiles.

Boo I am failing it! I give, it's not going to happen. But here is the rest of what I have. Some of it is mildly tweaked repost. Starts right after the line of asterisks at the bottom of this one. Oh and Sivier is now a girl. Called Silvie. Or Blondie, if you're 'Tatsu and can't remember names to save your life. 

I was more than a little annoyed to be put on prisoner detail, especially since not more than a week after the man had been trying to kill all of us, Boss wanted him working on important machinery. The conversation, however, went something like this: 

'Sin', ya want this guy to work for us, he's good.' 

'He's Spacer. A bomber pilot.' 

'Yeah, 'cause you never fucked anything up.' 

'I never killed hundreds of unarmed civilians.' 

'Ain't his fault how he was raised. Besides, you need the break. Ya work too hard.' 

'I don't have time to take a break.' 

'D'ya really trust someone like that to anyone else'? 

All right, he'd won. 

I took the Spacer out the next morning. It's only three and a half blocks from HQ to the apartment building. It'd been eight days since the last run, which had been far more of a disaster for them than for us; it was late morning; it was cloudy; we were safe. I kept glancing upwards and around anyway. 

'You're gonna get really bored doing that, the next one's not for another month,' the prisoner told me, two blocks down the road. Smirking. I knew better than to respond verbally, but I did flash a glare at him. 

'Yeah, right, you're scary. I know that, man. My humerus knows that. Chill.' He grinned like he expected me to be in on the joke. I wasn't. 

He kept talking. Very good at that. I kept ignoring him until we reached the fire exit that serves as a front door to this bank of buildings, and then all I said was 'Shut up and climb.' He followed orders more insubordinately than I would have thought possible. 

The apartment was in bad shape, but it had a bed, running water and most of the glass in the windows. The Spacer's only comment was 'Hell, it's bigger than my barracks,' so I didn't feel a need to beat appreciation into him. 

He collapsed on the bed and sighed. 'So, you gonna hang around looking ominous all day? I mean I appreciate eye candy as much as the next pansexual teenager, but I'm not into the shooty thing,' he said, making a gesture that, presumably, indicated a gun. 

I may have been leaning on a wall, and I don't think I'd let up on my glare all morning, so perhaps he had a point. Not about the eye candy, though. 'Not all day; I'm supposed to be checking on you every so often. Though I have more important things to do.' 

He gave me an incredulous look. 'So go do 'em. I'm not gonna run off, you know? Boss trusts me.' 

I shook my head. 'No, Boss trusts /me/. Not to let you run off.' 

No matter how pointless it was; I was going to end up having to shoot the man, no matter what Boss said about second chances. I would probably enjoy it. 

'Well /yeah/ that too, but that doesn't mean you have to be right bloody here. You can always go do your stalky thing someplace else.' Despite his claims, he didn't look at all scared. In fact he'd turned around to look at me upside-down on the bed, completely relaxed. 

It would've been easier if he were scared. Or at least made more sense. 

'If you were actually trustworthy, you wouldn't be trying to get rid of me.' 

'Ha! You are a paranoid bastard, aren't you'? 

'And you're Spacer trash; I know which I'd rather be,' I snapped back; he visibly flinched at that, which I'd hardly expected. Very interesting. I revised my estimation of him up a point or two. 

'I'm not Spacer, man. I mean I was about a week ago, but y'all aren't the only ones who got burned by them.' 

'Oh, so they're a 'them' now. I suppose you think that means you're Earthsider.' If he'd made the slightest move towards an affirmative answer, I think I would've added another few broken bones to his tally; but he didn't. Instead, he looked at the ceiling and scowled. 

'Nah. Not yet, anyway.' 

'Wise of you.' 

We were silent for a few minutes; apparently he'd run out of things to ramble on about. I was about to leave and let him get on with things - I didn't really expect him to be able to get anywhere, between the bugs and the noisy fire escape - when he came up with another topic. 

'Y'know I don't think I ever properly intro'd myself - I'm Futatsu. Walker. Call me 'Tatsu, no one can pronounce it right,' he said. He held out a hand, upside down. I stared at him. He thought better of it. 

I'm nowhere near fluent in Japanese, but I know the basics. 'Futatsu. I sincerely hope your parents weren't Japanese.' It's not at all difficult to pronounce, either. 

He laughed. 'Nice catch. Yeah, no, it was my Grandma. She was kinda off in the head,' he mused. 'So yeah. Some people get all the luck with the cool-sounding foreign names.' He gave me a considering look. 

'It's not /foreign/. My mother was Chinese.' /Why/ was I having this conversation? 

'That explains the pretty, then. Does it explain the accent? 'Cause I /like/ the accent.' That was about the point at which my common sense overrode whatever schaudenfreud-loving part of me had kept me talking. I refused to be flirted with by a Spacer. Particularly one I couldn't shoot. 

'This conversation is over. I'll check in in a few hours.' 

'All right, all right, see you later then. I promise not to blow anything up that you don't want me to,' he said. He may very well have continued, but I couldn't hear it once I hit the ladder. Just as well. 

Almost as soon as I got to my room, my comm buzzed. Wonderful. 'SingKueh.' 

''Kueh, man. How'd it go?' It's Silvie. Of course, Boss would've asked her to check on things. 

'He's installed. I take it the mics are working?' 

'Sure are. He's talking to himself. Sounds kinda annoyed about the whole thing.' She laughs. 'Ya should hear the nicknames he's come up with.' 

'I'm better off without, I'm sure.' 

'So I don't think we're gonna need ya for a while. Get some sleep. Keep the comm on though, Boss says he's thinkin' we could have trouble.' 

'Understood. SingKueh out.' 

I don't like it when Boss thinks we could have trouble. He has a very good track record of being right about it. 

*** 

(And here goes the bit in that entry that starts "Morning number one starts at...')

*** 

Day Three stabs me in the face - it's getting to be a tradition - and I once again forget the ground isn't where I frikkin' told it to be and drop out of bed. 'Fuck.' There isn't any glass there any more, though. See? Silver lining, knew I could find one. 

I get up. I say 'good morning' to the mic under my bed and the one in the top-right corner of the kitchen area, and give it a running narration. 'Going to counter, opening cabinet, pulling out a -' I check the label on the package '- tinfoil pack of probably-cornflakes, making plans to overthrow your despotic regime - oh, whoops, did I say that out loud?' It's the little things. I wonder if they're actually listening. If they are, I bet Boss is getting a laugh out of it. 

'So yeah, cornflakes.' I got my casts off yesterday thank /God/, and with the accelerated healing thing my leg's almost at full capacity, and my shoulder's, well, I'm just not gonna think about my shoulder right now, but it moves at least. So I can pace in circles if I'm bored instead of just thinking in 'em, which let me tell you is a hell of an improvement, giving me as it does almost fifteen more minutes of interest before I go totally stir-crazed. 

You know what I need? A monkey. No, seriously, hear me out here, it'd be like one of those hero-type sidekicks, and it'd sneak out and bring me like a soldering iron or something so I could finish this steam-powered water thinger. And it'd be dead cute so's to attract chicks. 

Who am I kidding, any monkey of mine would probably just throw shit at the walls. Nah, maybe a parrot. That'd give me something to talk to anyway. More interactive than the bugs, and less likely to cast suspicion my way. 

I finish the cornflakes just as someone comes through the window. I expect it to be SDaC, so when the footsteps are way lighter than they should be I just about refrain from throwing myself under the table in instinctive 'ohshit' response. I bet that full-body twitch looked pretty interesting. 

"Chill, it's me," a female voice says. I turn around and it's Blondie. You know, Boss's girlfriend. "Twitchy much?" 

"Hey, if I am you made me that way," I say. "What the hell's up with you?" 

She strides in and starts running her hands around under the table. "Checking the bugs," she says. "Ya found 'em, we gotta make sure you ain't got some kinda loop on 'em. That one's clean..." she pulls it out, checks it over, and sticks it back in. Woman's got really pretty hands. Hm. 

She jumps up on the counter to check the one on the ceiling, and when she's sure I haven't, like, put a tiny nuclear bomb on it or whatever, jumps down and starts looking over my diagrams, I guess so she can figure out if those are explosive or something. Don't know why they /would/ be, given I'd be the first one to go, but given my shitty track record down here they've got no reason to think I'm /not/ suicidal. 

"See, totally fine. Paranoid, aren't ya?" I ask her. There I go with the syntax again.

Not that, you know, I have a leg to stand on where that goes. I mean, I /have/ drawn up plans to mount one of those little mics on eight legs so it can follow me around. It actually only needs three, but an eight-legged camera is just awesome. Don't question the spider-cam. 

"What the hell is this?" Blondie - what's her real name, Silvie - is questioning the spider-cam. 

I grin. "Walking bug, of course," I tell her. 

"Y'know, I didn't half believe 'em when they said how good ya are." She looks at my wallpaper-and-ink plans - floralprints? - in disbelief. 

"You better now." 

Blondie's probably got a reason for being here. Now I can't blame her for being distracted by my engineering prowess, but I'd kinda like to know. And she's gotta know I want to know. She's almost as good as Boss at casual psychological torture. 

"Yeah, gotta face facts I guess. Y'think ya can get your brain 'round somethin' more practical?" she asks, smirking at me. She puts the prints down. 

"Depends what kind of practical you're talking about." 

"Think Boss said we wanted ya workin' on the G-819," she says. She's probably expecting me to jump in the air with glee, or something. I don't, but only 'cause it'd hurt coming down. 

I can feel the uncontrollable grin coming up, though. "Seriously? I mean, seriously seriously? You got a G-819 I can work on?" I mean they said it before, but. Holy shit. This may be the most awesome thing that's happened since back in university when I - well, that's a long story, remind me later - and this time doesn't even involve a universal solvent. 

"Yeah, seriously seriously. Ya start tomorrow if you can deal with, ya think that arm'll work for ya?" she says. Sweet of her not to mention my manic expression. Or the minor flailing that I may or may not be doing. 

"It'll do what I need it to for a gee-nine," I say. "Christ. I barely even got to fly one of those." 

"They're good," Blondie tells me. "'Til they get shot, 'course - that's the problem here, fuel tank's fucked, and the radio's still sending homing signals when it's on." 

"Oh /man/." I think I'm in shock. Just a bit. Blondie is way too amused by all this. Can't begrudge her that though, I get pretty ridiculous when I'm on a tangent. She pulls out a pack of actual graph paper, a ruler and pencils from her backpack and slaps it on the table. 

"I'mma work with ya on this one, so I got materials," she says. 

"I could kiss you." 

She slides down into the nearest chair, and says, "Don't." 

Instead, I pull up a chair, and we get started. 

***

If you have seen me IRL you've read it. Hopefully to develop a plot at some point.

The blue police box vworpped into Chicago, Illinois, United States of America, Earth, Two Thousand, just after sundown, surprising absolutely no one. When the tall, wiry man with the hair like a bird’s nest in a hurricane stepped out and took a deep breath, no one noticed.

A graveyard. The Doctor was almost positive he had not chosen to be here. Sometimes the TARDIS had its own ideas about where/when was best for him, but he’d had enough death for this week – year century lifetime – and it knew that. Clearly he’d got himself somewhere by accident, and more often than not when he did that he ended up saving the world, the human race, or the entire universe.

He’d had enough of that for this week as well.

He bounced on his heels and sniffed the air again, then screwed up his face. “That’s not good, no, not at all,” he muttered. “I’m sure I didn’t set it for Earth, and this is just…”

He left the thought unfinished as he ran back into the TARDIS, which whined at him, mentally. It didn’t like being here. Something – “Oh come on, what have I got into now?” he asked the machinery, darting around to the main monitor.

Tap-tap-tap and two levers and some telepathic nudges later, he had his answer. “Oh no no no this can’t be right!” He ran around to the opposite side as his ship sparked its indignation at him.

Outside, something loud and bright cracked into a tree, and the Doctor was one hundred percent certain that it had not been lightning. Not here.

“Don’t tell me that, I’ve just saved the one, don’t say there’s another one demanding it please.” His words matched the pace of his fingers on the keyboards, and his heartbeats were getting in on the race. “And not even oh, there goes that 23rd century monitor, I liked that one.” Things were falling apart at an alarming rate, and he’d made some backups after the last time this happened so the TARDIS would be all right in itself, but a lot of the peripherals weren’t meant to stand up to –

Another crack and the TARDIS whirred and died. The Doctor took only a moment to sigh over it; he’d better get the backups working before he went to investigate.

Plug the recharger into the disconnected energy source, switch it on, and watch it glow. Much more convenient than using up his lifespan, even if it was considerably less dramatic. “Hang on, all right? I’ll go do something about this,” he told the egg of blue light. He had the sonic screwdriver in his pocket and was out the door before the next flash of light crashed into the side of the TARDIS.

He winced, but the shields didn’t waver, and he let out a breath he hadn’t realized he’d held. Something large and remniscient of a Korlzitelk, all big curled horns and goat legs, barrelled past him bellowing its displeasure. The Doctor was sure that Korlzitelks didn’t smoke, ordinarily, and stepped out of the way to let it continue its rampage.

Something that was probably human ran after it, shouting in very bad Latin, and sending another blast of the light – blue, now that he had time to notice – at the Korlzitelk, which shriveled and disappeared. They had been known to do that on occasion, so the Doctor decided to let it go.

The human – yes, certainly a human, no doubt of that now that he had time to look, really see the man – stopped, and stared at him. He had a big stick and a black trenchcoat, and his timelines and potentialities twisted in a way that gave the Doctor a headache.

Looking at Jack was wrong, because what Jack was was wrong. Looking at this man was wrong, but it wasn’t due to any inherent flaws on his part. No, in this case, the fault lay entirely with the Doctor.

“Oi, you, you nearly blew a hole in my ship,” he greeted the man, putting on his best disarming grin along with his spectacles. “Not that it did any harm, but that is a fascinating stick you have there. …Mind if I have a look?” he asked.

The man did not look impressed, and looked less impressed when he looked back to see the TARDIS where the Doctor had pointed to it. “That’s not a ship,” he said. “That’s a wooden box.” Though he did look a little concerned about the whole matter.

The Doctor sighed. Every time. “Well of course it is. Bigger on the inside though, I’ll give you that – though not if that thing you’ve got there had gotten through the shields.” He bit his lip thoughtfully. “Some kind of sonic blaster, isn’t it? Are you sure I can’t have a look?”

“Who the hell are you?” the man challenged. Well, all right, he’d walked into that one. He should have known he was dealing with the suspicious type.

“I’m the Doctor,” he said, and stuck out his hand. The man didn’t respond, his left hand clenched in a fist and his right still around the stick, which was glowing, and not just with the fascinating patterns it was making in causality.

The Doctor gave up on a friendly handshake and returned to the matter at hand. “You just discorporated a Korlzitelk. You lot aren’t supposed to have those until what, 3380?”

The man gave him that stare he knew so well – the one that said that here was a mind with untold depths of inanity. But the man wasn’t meeting his eyes. He was doing a good job of looking him in the face, but there’d been not a flash of eye contact since they’d begun speaking, or the Doctor had.

“But I think you’ve got in touch a little bit early, haven’t you? Yeah, yeah, different world different rules – I’m guessing eye contact does something kind of…” he waved his hand in an expressive manner: alarming, terrific, dangerous. “…You know, and you were speaking Latin back there. Very bad Latin, mind. So you chose words.” He was becoming unable to contain his grin. All right, he was stuck here, but a whole new universe, with whole new rules.

“But I bet if I tell you Carrionite…” he said, pointing. The man failed to shriek and disappear, but he did take a step back. The Doctor nodded and smiled. “Oh that’s wonderful. Absolutely wonderful.”

“I don’t know what you are, but take your damn wooden box and get out of my city,” the man said, raising the stick. Or, rather, the sonic… sonic staff? Why not.

“Oh very good, very good! ‘What’, not ‘who’. Yes, very good. Except I can’t.” The Doctor went serious very suddenly, thinking of that little blue light in the darkness. “Because it’s going to take a little while for my TARDIS to put itself back together.”

“Is that what you call that thing?” the man asked.

“Yep. It’s partially alive, but a lot of it is electronic,” he explained. “And your technology doesn’t play well with my technology.” And he was stuck in a world where technology was in the head and on the tongue.

“Magic. It’s not technology, it’s magic,” the man said. “Dresden,” he said finally, shifting the staff into the crook of his left arm and putting out his hand. “Harry Dresden.”

“Nice to meet you, Harry Dresden,” the Doctor said. They shook. Harry was wearing a bracelet of silver that glistened and rippled in eye-bending ways.

“And you’re the Doctor. Just the Doctor? I gave you my name,” Harry said.

“Yeah, and thank you for that,” the Doctor said, moving on quickly to the next question. “So, magic! The staff is, the bracelet is, the ring is, you are,” he added. “Do you count the Korlzitelk as magic too?”

“You mean the satyr,” Harry corrected him. “It was a satyr. And it was trying to kill me,” he added, almost defensively.

“It probably had a good reason for it, but no harm done,” the Doctor said. “It’ll be back eventually.”

Harry rolled his eyes. “Yeah, trying to kill me again. Are you going to try that? Only it’s been a hell of a week and I’d rather not.”

“What? No, I’m not,” the Doctor told him with genuine shock. “I’m just stuck here, not bent on invasion. You lot have had enough of that.”

Harry gave him a long, suspicious look. “What are you talking about?”

“Oh, sorry, it’s 2000, isn’t it.” Canary Wharf, the Christmas invasion, even the Master were all still half a decade off. If they happened happened. If Torchwood here would leave well enough alone – would there be a Torchwood here?

Only if there was another him here. The thought gave the Doctor pause, but he didn’t let the uncertainty show on his face for very long. Last thing he needed was for Harry to take control of the conversation.

Manic expression again. “That aside, if you’re done shooting up the place, I’m here for at least another forty-eight hours. The TARDIS’ll be fine by itself. You wouldn’t know where I could get a good meal, would you?” he asked.

“You haven’t told me anything,” Harry pointed out. “That box shouldn’t still be standing. You’ve got no name and half of what you’ve said is nonsense.” He shifted the staff back into his right hand, setting himself up. As if the Doctor were a threat.

“I told you enough, haven’t I? I’m the Doctor and I’m stuck here. And I’m absolutely starving. Come on, let’s go find a pub. Are we in Chicago?” That was what the TARDIS had said, but the skyline was different. A few extra buildings here, a clear space there, nothing too dramatic – and on the other hand, it certainly smelled like Chicago. He set off.

Taking the lead usually worked, and people were happy to follow him, or at least too confused to do otherwise. Harry Dresden was different. The Doctor was nearly out of the graveyard when he heard, “You don’t want to go that way. There’ll be more of them.”

“What, more Korlzitelks? I’m not the one who’s shooting at them,” the Doctor reminded him, leaving the boundries of the graveyard. Then he stopped, looked around, and ducked, quite suddenly. Bullets whizzed over his head.

“Always with the shooting!” They’d come from over to his left, from the parked cars, and then there was Harry, already running in the opposite direction, and shouting at him to do the same. It seemed sensible. He ran. Behind them, bullets bounced off a force field in midair.

Harry launched himself into a small and beat-up multicoloured Bug, and the Doctor, slightly faster, whipped around into the passenger’s side.

“Well that’s a good old-fashioned Earth welcome for you,” he commented. Harry ignored him, intent on speeding away as fast as possible. Just as well too; three cars had pulled away from the curb and were in hot pursuit.

“What are you doing in my car?” Harry growled, and made a turn that had to be illegal, by the laws of nature if not the laws of man.

“You said to run!” The Doctor glanced behind them. “Good idea, by the way.” Someone was leaning out the window of the car behind them. The Doctor pulled out his sonic screwdriver, rolled the window down, set the device to ‘resonate lead’ and pressed.

The gunshot went off but was not followed by a bullet, and Harry turned into a busy street while their pursuers slowed in confusion. “There! No harm done.” Assuming they weren’t followed any further. The Doctor looked back; the cars went past the intersection and then faded from sight. That was new.

“You’re not a wizard. What the hell did you just do?” Harry asked, with a suspicious glance at the sonic screwdriver.

“Wizard? No, not so much. Well, I am brilliant enough for it. But this…” he tossed the screwdriver from hand to hand “…is just a fascinatingly good piece of technology.”

Harry gave it a look like he expected it to explode at any second. Given the TARDIS’s reaction to his sonic blaster, maybe it would. Better to avoid it: the Doctor slipped the thing back into a pocket.

“So, have days like this often?” he asked Harry brightly.

“More often than you’d expect,” Harry told him. “Though the suicidal British guy is a new one on me. Why are you following me again?” The light was green, and the car traveled slowly down the street. Almost as if they hadn’t been nearly killed moments before.

The Doctor shrugged. “Seemed the best thing under the circumstances?”

“It isn’t. I’ve got something weird after me. And I’m leaving you out of it.” Harry’s jaw set, and the lines on his brow deepened. Outside, the heavy traffic gave way to a side street which offered the tantalizing possibility of parking space.

“Oh, weird, I like weird. How weird?” the Doctor asked. “How much weirder does it get than a wizard?” He gave Harry his it’s-just-an-innocent-question look, but Harry was having none of it.

“Someone with no name who stepped out of a police box that wasn’t there five minutes ago?”

“Yeah, well. At least I’m consistent.”

Picks up right where the last one left off. After this we'll switch to 'Kueh's point of view for a while, 'cause 'Tatsu is tiring.

No, you haven't seen Sivier before. He exists. Looks like Quatre only taller and nastier.

I’m not gonna take this lying down – figuratively, anyway – though, so. “I’m gonna be after his fucking blood! I might never get this fucking arm back, and you can’t fly with one fucking arm!” I snarl. Oh. Is that what I’m so damn upset about? Yeah, that’ll do it. Worse than trechery, worse than conspiracy, I am grounded now. I’m a groundie. Gods above and below, that’s disgusting.

But since Marine is looking at me again – fuck him. I have bigger problems – no, I don’t, not at the moment, and not looming over me with fists clenched – okay, I back off. In a manly, reasoned fashion. I absolutely do not jerk back from him and slam into the wall. I knew that wall was there, I just don’t want to upset it by telling it so, so I yelp. At this rate I’m never going to heal.

Boss laughs at me. Oh shut the fuck up. “Down, boy. We already got what we need, we can stop freakin’ him out. Go get some sleep,” he says. “I’ll get him set up, soon enough.” He drops on a cinderblock, hand on his hip holster, and lounges. I gotta give him this, it’s kinda impressive to see a guy lounge on an improv chair made of all right angles.

Marine goes off somewhere, which leaves me alone with the guy who has not yet actually hit me, which is at least somewhat reassuring.

He looks at me. I look at him. He has this shit-eating grin on his face. I doubt I look so fucking pleased with myself.

“Get the canary?” I ask, dry as Death Valley.

He nods. “Ya know, we gotta work on your attitude problem.”

“I will show you a fucking attitude problem the next time I can fucking stand up –“ I growl at him.

“Not great reason for me to let you, is it?” No, it’s not. “Look, here’s where we are – I got a ship needs fixed, you got a powerful need to get off the ground. We’re going’ at the same angles, see?” he says. I chart trajectories before I realize it’s a metaphor. Thought I had a monopoly on those. Yes I know that’s stupid, I told you I was concussed.

“So you let me hang onto you for another coupla days, you can get the feel of the place, we can make sure you ain’t got a bunch o’ friends on backup, we’ll be in business.” He leans back even more on the rough brick. That so can’t be comfortable, though I guess I don’t have much of a leg to stand on – metaphorically, I still have most of my leg intact – since I’m sitting on a piece of metal that’s making a really serious bid for interpersonal relations. I’m too tired to actually move.

“All my friends are brainwashed or dead,” I say. “I still blame that last part on you dicks. Just so you don’t get any ideas.” Would I take another way to get back at the colony leaders? Don’t know. Like ‘em or not these guys did save my life, in a sick and twisted and sadistically torturous way, and only after kicking the shit out of me to begin with. But there’s still shit left to be kicked, so that counts for something.

“I know there ain’t no love lost between us, and I do hate what we gotta do some days. But look me in the eye and tell me you ain’t killed.” I can’t do it and he’s gotta know that.

“Seventy-three. That I’m sure of,” I say. I don’t look up at him. Yeah. I’m not proud of that, either. I don’t know all their names, I’m not some psycho-angsting anime hero, and I don’t know half their faces. But I know I killed ‘em.

“Headed right on down with the rest of us,” he says. Okay, so I killed the laughter too. Not for long though, ‘cause he can’t seem to stay on a hard topic too long, not that I’m in any place to throw stones.

“Think I’ll put you in with ‘Kueh first off. He shouldn’t’a shot ya,” Boss says, conspiratorially.

“Damn right he shouldn’t’a!” Oh shit, I’m picking up his accent. Give me another week and I’ll have his freaking syntax, too.

He continues like he didn’t notice, which, you know, I’m usually the only one who does. “So I think it’ll do him some good, if you’re on his watch for a while.”

“And where the hell does my good come into all this?” I snap. I do not want to room with that bastard. I only have so much control over my animal instincts. And I can’t figure out whether jumping him or hitting him would screw up our further relationship more.

Boss gives me a lazy, mocking smile. “I ain’t never said nothin’ about your good,” he says.

Are infuriating bastards born, or made? Either way, like I said: this one’s had lots of practice. “And if either of us kills the other?”

“I’m not liking your odds in that matchup,” he says.

More footsteps, lighter this time, interrupt my detailed revenge fantasy. It’s a tall skinny blond guy with a big-ass rifle. “Trey,” he greets Bossguy, than sees me and nods. “This is the one?”

“I’m the one? Does this mean I can dodge bullets now?” I wonder aloud.

Boss chooses to ignore me – I knew he learned fast – nods to blondie, and says, “Yeah. Futatsu Walker.”

“’Tatsu, okay? You guys suck at Japanese ‘f’.”

“’Tatsu,” says blondie, blank-faced. “I’m Sivier. You won’t be seeing much of me.”

“Ow, burned,” I say. Sivier gives me what might be the tiniest of smiles. Dear god – does that mean he actually got a joke? There’s someone in this place whose sense of humor isn’t totally fubared? Well shit, I might get along all right.

“Well he might,” Boss says. “He’s Air Force.” Sivier looks at me again with new interest.

“What kind of ship?” he asks. I shrug.

“Little bit of everything – my Stella was custom, got the body of a G-813, little extra in the computers and wings – dammit, it took me like eight months to get those wings attached right…” I say.

“Your Stella?” he echoes. “You called a spaceship Stella.”

“Yeah, I did, and it got me laid for six straight months, so don’t knock it,” I say with a grin. He shakes his head to hide the smirk, then goes back to the poker face.

“Y’all pilots can perv over your boats later, hear? He’s with ‘Kueh for a couple weeks, get that G-8whatever off the ground, and if he’s still in the clear maybe I’ll let you play,” Boss says.

Sivier’s eyes widen. “He’s gonna fix the G-819?”

My eyes’d be bugging out of their sockets if they weren’t halfway to swollen shut. “You have a G-819?”

Boss throws up his hands. “I bloody hope so and not if you don’t get it workin’. I tell you. Pilots.”

“Because you’ve never spent an hour fondling your semiautomatic,” Sivier snarks at him, then puts a kind of intimate hand on his shoulder. Well I guess he’s off-limits then, you really don’t wanna flirt with the boss’s boytoy. Remind me to tell you that story sometime. Or maybe not.

“I ain’t made a career out of it, is all. Sivier, wanna get someone to stick down here for me? I got shit to do and this guarding thing is hella stressful.” Boss is so relaxed he may as well be asleep, but whatever. As long as newguy – do they have chicks in this place? Haven’t seen one yet – isn’t triggerhappy, I’m cool. Since I’m not gonna be getting out of here anytime soon.

“Nice to know I’m a high priority,” I snipe.

Sivier ignores me. I’m truly and deeply wounded. “Yeah, sure. Who you want?”

“Seiji or someone.”

“Got it, Boss.” They touch hands before he leaves. Cute.

***

So the next three, four days, maybe, it’s not like I can tell time anymore what with the distinct lack of window, I sit around and get better, for a given value of ‘better’. I don’t see SDaC – good – but I do see a hell of a lot more of Marine than I want to. And kind of a lot of Boytoy, which I can deal with. As long as I don’t refer to him by that nickname to his face.

And there’s this guy Dirk, who’s the doctor, about seventy years old, a total drunken lout, and fucking awesome. And did something to my leg and ribs that made them heal in about a week. Which, seriously, even if not for the other great aspects to his personality, that’d have me putting up little candlelit shrines to the man. Assuming I had candles.

After three-or-four days, while I’ve still got the fucking cast on, they pull me out of the little cinderblock not-cell and install me in a third-floor apartment with external access only. Charming. Even more charming is the fact that it’s got SDaC living a floor below it. And he’s got orders to check up on me like once every six hours.

Boss’s rationalization for this is that I’m an important guy, got engineering knowledge they can’t match, so I get the most important guard. He grinned way too hard when he said that. Dick.

Morning Number One dawns at, to no one’s great surprise, dawn, when I get stabbed in the face with a sunbeam. Fucking lack of curtains. I roll out of bed, stop myself when I remember bed’s actually off the ground now, manage not to injure myself getting to the little food closet, and accomplish breakfast, the only casualties being some not-very-important-anyway taste buds. This shit they call cereal is almost as bad as MREs.

“Okay, that’s done, is there any way to take a fucking shower in this place? Water pressure’s shot,” I say out loud. “Nevermind, I’ll just stink, not like anyone else cares.” Not like I get to see anyone else, ‘cepting my sort-of jailer.

He’ll be by at some point. Do I care if he sees the place a mess? Nah. Besides maybe he’ll take the messed-up bed as an invitation – good god I need to get laid.

You know what? I bet I can get these water pipes to take steam power.

Two and a half hours, some serious stick-on-wallpaper diagrams, and a rough wooden model later, SDaC shows up looking like someone kicked his cat. “What the hell are you doing?”

I’m halfway buried under the useless kitchen sink with a pair of shitty wirecutters. “Engineering. ‘S why you’re keeping me around, right?” I say, without moving. It took some serious doing to get into this position without killing any ribs and I am not giving it up without a fight.

“What sort of engineering requires tearing down the walls?” he asks.

“This sort,” I say. What the hell is that accent? I thought UK, but it isn’t. Wrong vowels. Weird. I shouldn’t be thinking about this while my fingers are where they are.

I swear to god he actually taps his fingers on the countertop, waiting for me to be more enlightening. I’m torn between being annoying and gushing about my new project. Ah, what the hell.

“I wanna get some piping so I can work out a steam system for the water in this building. Model’s on the table. Might not be the best mockup but it’s scaled, and this ain’t rocket science,” I say, and finally get the damn wirecutters to pierce the last bit of metal. Awesome. The pipe falls on my shoulder, which isn’t so awesome, but whatever. It’s not the healing one.

I wriggle out of the cabinet and make a show out of it, ‘cause I am just that talented, and also ‘cause otherwise it’ll look like I’m pathetically unable to bend more than three degrees. Which may be true. Which is his fault. But I don’t get the feeling he goes in for guilt.

With pipe held above my head – in the single working arm I have currently, not that I’m bitter or anything – I declare, “This is my boomstick!”

He raises an eyebrow. Some people have no appreciation for the classics.

“And what exactly are you going to do with that?”

Ow fuck I think I just bit through my tongue trying not to give the first eight replies that inspired. Seems a damn shame to throw away such a perfect straight line. Such is my suffering.

I plunk the boom-pipe down on the table. “Gonna be my stress-test. Now have you got something to actually do?” I ask him.

“I was supposed to be sleeping, but found that impossible,” he says. Come to it he does look kind of tired. Though his hair’s not messed up. Gotta get him to tell me how he does that.

“Sorry man, it’s time to get out of bed. Bright and shining new day.” I grab my best presketch and look it over. “Hey, you got a big metal tub and some solder?” I ask. Look, I have some seriously serious attention when I’m on a project. Pretty as he is, SDaC can’t compete with steam power.

“Some of us didn’t get in until five this morning,” he says, refusing to be distracted. Hey, okay, I get it, man needs his sleep.

“Been out partying?” I ask. Am I trying to piss him off? Signs point to probably.

He gives me this cutting look and hell, for all I know he could be actually trying to laser a beam through my skull. He’s got his work cut out for him then; I got one hell of a dense head.

“Now that is a hangover look if I ever saw one,” I declare.

I swear he’d be growling if he knew how. I should teach him. “I do not party. I was out until five in the morning waiting for your rescue party.”

Ouch. Man knows how to hurt a guy. “Wait, I have a rescue party?”

The glare’s too far gone to make any worse without doing some serious facial rearrangement, but dammit, he tries. “We got intel that you did. Fortunately, you weren’t that important.”

And again. I’m gonna have to start scoring some points or he’s – wait, he shot me. I still have the moral high ground, at least until he starts bringing up strafing.

So whatever, I let it slide off me and go about my business. Point made, he leaves. I don’t look up from my blueprints - wallpaperprints, whatever - until half past noon.

All you need to know: 'Tatsu got shot down. *Someone* picked him up. Backstory. To Be Continued as soon as the next line stops trying to injure me.

So here I am fucked up beyond all recognition in someone else’s cell, which is not where you wanna be in the middle of a war, and especially not when you know the war’s against terrorists, and especially not when you’re trained to resist torture and they know it, because dammit, all my training ever gets me is beat up worse. Anyway yeah, I already have about five hundred bruises and I can’t breathe right and hey, they patched up my leg, which is damn decent of them, but not gonna help my opinion of them a whole lot in the long run.

I go through all that in two and a half seconds and I don’t make a noise except a little tiny hitch in breathing when I find out about my broken ribs, but the guy standing watch over me still knocks on the cinderblocks and says, “Hey. Get up.”

No point pretending, I guess, and I sit up and try not to scream. I mean they know I’m fucked up, but I might as well try to do the tough-guy thing, and dammit, I swear I do not whimper. Not even a little bit, when I twist and my abdominal muscles are attacked by flamethrower-wielding porcupines.

Guy is taller than I am and half again as big around, and full of efficient-looking malice. He has a dorky but practical haircut. His clothes are beat up. I’m trying not to think about how few scars he has. You think facial scars are scary? Nah. What’s fucking scary is someone who looks like he’d break you in half and pour your blood over cereal, all casual-like, and doesn’t have any marks from the eight hundred fights he must’ve been in.

Scary-guy glares at me – I guess it could be his standard, but it looks like a glare. God, imagine having sex with a guy like that. Anyway. So then someone else comes in, and he is kinda roughed up, but scary-guy defers, so he’s probably even more dangerous. God-fucking-dammit.

I push myself sitting against the wall, and stop. “Sorry man, can’t get any farther than this. Thanks for the leg, though. Feels almost like it’s not gonna cause my painful death from blood-loss and infection!” I tell boss-guy, and give him a wave and my best smile. I think it’s kinda hard to charm a guy when half your face is gone purple from a fucking rock being thrown at it, though, ‘cause he doesn’t look impressed.

Also the porcupines have taken up tap-dancing. Does this mean I should keep my stupid fucking mouth shut? Nah.

“That’d be kinda a shame, yeah?” he says. Guy’s got a straight-up Earthsider accent, probably some flavor of North American. He also grins like a pro. I am in such deep shit right now.

“I like to think so,” I say. Like I ever pass up a chance to talk.

“I’d think so. You got a lot to tell me, flyboy,” he says. Who the fuck says ‘flyboy’?

“Yeah that’s not high on my list of priorities right now,” I tell him. “I’ll just be leaving. Hate to be mobbed and run, but you know, got a lot to do.”

He nods, totally nonchalant. I may be outclassed. “Yeah, I bet. Lots of folks to slaughter, buildings to bomb, that kinda thing, yeah?”

I weigh the options, trying not to talk with my hands and failing. Damned ingrained habits. “Something like that. Probably lighter on the slaughter and heavier on the bombings. What with the whole ‘terrorist’ situation, you fuckers are hard to kill.”

Bossguy sighs and nods at scaryguy, who promptly steps into my cell and kicks me back onto the floor. I do not yell. Maybe just a little bit. Mostly I’m centered on the oh-my-fucking-god-PAIN thing, so I might not know what I’m talking about, but I don’t hear myself yelling until after I get a chance to stop seeing white. The porcupines take up residence in my head and shoulder and also, get issued napalm. Little spiny fuckers.

“I ain’t anybody’s terrorist, spacer. So. You’re Futatsu Walker.” He gives my rank and serial number, and the division I belong to, and the model of plane I fly. Well fuck me.

From somewhere – sure as hell not my brain, ‘cause that’s clearly not working at this point or I’d have shut up – I manage to retrieve the sentence, “Something seems kinda backwards about this.”

I don’t see him grin, being all sprawled on the floor, as you do, but I can hear it. “I’m not seein’ it, nope. See, way I got this situation worked out, the guy willin’ to give out the information don’t get beat up. You seem like a bright fella, you understand.”

Yeah, I understand, since this situation is not exactly new to me. These guys are smart though. Bothers me. Seem nice enough, too. It’s really gonna suck when I have to kill ‘em.

“Warning you, I’m trained in resisting torture.” ‘Course that doesn’t mean I’m actually good at it, and like I said, all it ever gets me is more bruises. Not like guys like me even ever get any top-secret shit to keep under wraps.

I pull myself up, keep my head as still as I can – feels like my brain’s sloshing around in my head, and it takes me a while to focus. Concussion: fun with sensory warp.

Bossguy nods. “Yeah see, I kinda figured. So I’m not gonna bother, right off, ‘less I hear you cursing my folks again.” Oh great… wait, what?

“That’s not how it’s supposed to go.” I don’t think. Could be wrong. Might be perceiving time backwards. That’d be kinda cool.

He shakes his head, and all of a sudden scaryguy is pulling me to an upright position. The fuck? Bossguy says, “Nah, wrong again. First I’m gonna give you some info, you’re gonna kindly not try to kill me, and then we’re gonna see who’s willing. After that, we go on to torture. If we need it. We usually don’t.”

I get upright in time to hear the end of that little speech and boggle. There’s a usual? “What the fuck?”

I’m kinda starting to hate that grin. Serious annoyance factor going on here. “Yeah, we get folks down like this a lot.” He nods at scaryguy significantly.

I pick up on this subtle sign instantly… momentarily… very slowly. Oh shut the hell up, I’m concussed. “…Tall-dark-and-fucked-in-the-head there was Spacer?”

Scaryguy says, “Yes, and I’m not anymore. Though I still do hate pilots.” He has a perfect Colony accent and the deepest voice I ever heard.

He also has a very specific attitude. “Oh fuck me, it’s infantry.”

His glare gets deeper. He’s gonna get wrinkles when he’s older. “I was Marines. Don’t even.”

“Thought Marines never left a guy behind? Fucking traitor,” I spit out. He hits me again. Something kind of cracks in what I think is probably my spine.

Bossguy clucks, which is just surreal. Sounds like someone’s grandma. “Both’a you shut it. Une here’s gonna give you some stuff that’ll give you a real life-changin’ experience, then I’m gonna come back, we’re gonna talk. You clear?”

Yeah, clear, even though the porcupines running races through my eye sockets are making it kinda hard to focus. “…Ow. Yeah. Clear. Fucked up, but clear.” I want to curse out the fucking traitor a bit better. Can’t though. Kind of fuzzy. Oh look, I’m halfway on the floor again. And I’m so going to have a black eye. Nice.

Bossguy rolls his eyes, I think. I’m losing focus. I will not pass out, dammit. “Yeah, you’re gonna fit right in,” he says. “Une, get him the folders, and for the love of Pete don’t let SingKueh in here ‘til after he’s had his revelation.” Marine-man walks out. I do not sigh in relief. I think.

Anyway so new information! I latch on to that to keep my brain from frying itself. “Who the hell’s SingKueh?”

Bossguy snickers. “Chinese guy, ‘bout your height, carries a sword.”

I know him! “That motherfucker shot me!” And it fucking hurt! And I completely forgot about it until right now! Fuck. Now my shoulder hurts even worse. It’s probably totally fucked up. Whee, that means seven hundred hours of physical therapy before I can even think about setting this whole damn place on fire.

Shrug. “You’re a bomber pilot.” Oh really. I’d forgotten. Damn, my sarcasm sucks right now.

“I wasn’t shooting at him,” I protest. Okay I was about half an hour before that, but then I got shot out of the fucking sky, so I think I made up for it, you know?

Bossguy gives me what I think is his calculating look, and I shiver. Because it’s cold. And I may or may not be in shock. “Yeah, that’s true. And you didn’t shoot the kids.”

“Oh man, that says…” deep breath to finish the sarcastic thought “…great things about your social system.” Bossguy shifts half a step closer and I do not edge back, I move to push myself back up against the wall. Because I’ve fallen on the floor again. Okay, that last bit’s actually true, I am so, so fucked. And he’s really tall. Though that could be just ‘cause I’m looking up from the floor of a fucking cell. I hate perspective.

He looks curious, not murderous. That’s scarier. Oh I am so killing him when I can stand up without crying like a little bitch. “None of us ever shoot kids. You folks, you shoot everything.”

Not like I’d have to if someone hadn’t decided it was time to blow a fucking colony out of the sky. “I don’t. Can we get this fucking over with?” I’m kinda looking forward to the unconsciousness bit now. Except for the bit where I have to wake up later.

“Not a problem. Just knock out for a while, Une’ll be back when you come to. Read. Talk to me when you’re done.” I have no idea what the fuck he’s talking about, and you know, I’d tell him so, but he’s kinda spinning and I don’t think he’d hear me from so far away and I don’t have the energy to shout…

***

I wake up, and it hurts. Like I didn’t expect that. Still.

At least it’s not porcupines anymore! Now, it’s sandpaper in the eyeballs, and pickaxe-bearing, combat-boot-wearing circus bears. In my head. Mother-fuck.

At least I’m tracking. I think. When I hear something outside the cinderblock wall – Christ, if I was in any shape to take anyone, I could waltz right on out of here – and my head whips around on instinct, I only yelp a little as the world turns forty-five degrees inside out. Forty-five degrees of pain.

But after that, I can focus. It’s Marine-man again. Whatsit. Une. Weirdass name. Not that I’m one to talk (thanks, Grandma). He’s got a file folder, beat-up old thing with a bunch of cheap newspaper in it.

He tosses it over at me and I just barely manage to smack it with the tips of my fingers – oh god why I just made a quick movement with my shot arm OW – and send the contents flying across the floor. “Fuck!” I swear to high heaven I’m usually more coordinated than this.

“Read those. Keep quiet ‘til you’re done,” he says, and settles himself back into the opening of the cinderblocks. He doesn’t put his back to me, and normally I’d say that’s smart, but seriously? I’d have trouble fighting off a concussed mosquito at this point. If I tried to knock him out, it’d be like the blooper reel to a slapstick comedy. Pick up cinderblock, spin around under its weight, flailing picturesquely, drop on toes, cry like five-year-old girl.

“Whatever, Groundie.” He growls – swear to God, growls, like the world’s most horrifying pit bull. I subside. Guess my sense of self-preservation is kicking in – didn’t know I had one of those.

So the papers are all Colony, Pacem Times, Inceptia Report – hang on a frickin’ minute, Inceptia? I check the date. It’s just two and a half days before the explosion.

I glare up at Marine-man. Are they trying to make me even more pissed off than I already am? There’s a reason I’m down here, dammit, and this is it.

He glares right back. There’s something to be said for the fuck-off power of a black eye and an open head wound, but his is still better. I look back at the paper, and force myself to focus on the text.

Nothing interesting. The clipped article is on the hydrogen-fusion energy cells. You know, the ones the Inceptia scientists were working on before the fucking groundie terrorists fucking blew up the fucking colony with every fucking civilian still on it. The ones that would’ve put us on Mars and let us get the hell out of Earth’s skies.

It’s cross-reffed to a bunch of the bits that Marine-man spilled all over the place – I am so not at fault for that, you don’t throw shit at a concussed guy unless you really want it broke. Don’t really feel like dragging myself all over the room to look ‘em up in order, so I grab the nearest. A piece of damn good repro military memo paper, signed and sealed – holy mother fucker of God.

This isn’t repro. No, that is sure as shootin’ the real thing. And it says, and I quote the important bits:

Operation Earthside: mission accomplished. Rebel planted.

And it’s signed by the fucking head of the UK Army. And it’s dated a day before the explosion.

I try for a laugh, but I wind up sounding like death with a head cold. “You guys got some good forgers, down here,” I say. Marine-man doesn’t dignify that with a verbal response. Yeah, so it was pretty weak. No way they’ve got the tools to do this kinda stuff down here. Not then, not now. I already figured that out: the actual head of the actual UK military sent this. To the actual head of the actual US army. A day before anyone ever capitalized the word ‘earthside’.

So everyone knows Earthside Rebel were the guys who brought down the Inceptia. I was only ten and I remember it damn well – hell, that’s when I decided I wanted to join the military. I used to go on field trips to Inceptia. My dad knew some people there. I saw it fall apart and burn up on reentry. I went to the funerals.

No one ever figured out how the groundies got in. There were all kindsa conspiracy theories, and here I am, holding the proof of the biggest one of all.

“Someone tell me I’m asleep,” I mutter, and shake the paper. Yeah, ‘cause my fucked-up brain is just hallucinating conspiracy shit – dammit, I never believed a word of it, always figured it was just social engineering and there were maybe two or three suicidal bastards on the colony – and it’ll resolve into something totally innocent if I just look at it right.

Marine-man says, “You woke up fifteen minutes ago.”

“Goddammit, I was trying to forget that,” I tell him. Glare. Maybe if I focus through the paper.

Nope. I grab the next article. The Mars project is postponed: there’s Earth to deal with first. Earthsiders keeping the crops, refusing to support the colonies, yeah, I remember that: fucking famine in the most developed time in man’s history. There’s a reason I’m so damn short.

So then we finally figure out the stupid space-worthy growing fields, get some supply colonies going, and there’s a whole fucking official paper trail that says shit like ‘postpone acknowledgement’ and ‘delicate situation’ and ‘sway public opinion’ and God damn it.

“Fuck!” Not eloquent. I’d hit the wall, but I don’t need any more breaks, so I just slam my head against it, very gently. “God-damned mother-fucking sons of camels’ prison bitches!” Better. I still need to hit something.

“Yeah, it’s kind of like that,” Marine-man says. He has a told-you-so smirk on. I could hit him. That’d be cathartic. I probably look like I’m about to try, because he says, “If I hit you again, you’ll stay down. Don’t.” Like I have a choice.

“Real tough, Marine. You usually threaten guys when they’re down with cracked ribs and a broken leg?” I fucking hate torturers so much. I also hate traitors. …Fuck. I think I’m about to have to hate myself.

He does that growly thing again. “I don’t usually have to hit people more than once.”

I believe it, but dammit, I do not let it show. “Oh right, sorry, tough guy. Didn’t mean to insult your mad beating-defenseless-prisoners skillz.” It is one of my virtues that I get more sarcastic when I’m terrified. It’s probably a good thing he doesn’t know me well enough to know that.

There’s a light footstep in the hallway before he can pull his brain cell together for a witty comeback. That’s not Bossguy’s walk, so… huh. I did have a revelation, after all.

My suspicions are confirmed when a sword-hilt and shiny black hair come into view. I can’t remember his name, but it’s my Chinese swordsman. The one who put a bullet in my shoulder.

Which shrieks as I try to pull myself into a less pathetic-looking position - I’m going to put a bullet through his eye. Okay it’s gonna be a shame, ‘cause they are damn good-looking eyes, but I am still going to do it.

He looks over Marine’s shoulder, glaring down at me. Fuck. So maybe I’m not, actually.

“You’ve figured it out?” he says, with a clipped UK-groundie accent. I glare right back. I think I’ve got him beat, though he gets points for being, you know, standing upright.

“Yeeeeeah, I think I got it,” I say. “You guys should look into getting a bigger circulation.” Bigger than ‘people you’ve nearly killed and are keeping captive in a jury-rigged prison’.

“We’ve tried. Each time, we find ourselves fighting enemies from above,” short-dark-and-Chinese says. It’s damn impressive how much ice you can get into a UK accent.

I try to shrug, wince, and settle for a sort of quirk of the eyebrows. Even that hurts. And I don’t think I’m getting back to the infirmary anytime soon. At least I won’t have to resist the temptation of sweet, blessed morphine that way.

Short-dark-and-Chinese does not seem impressed by my massive skills in reparte. Do something about that later. “So I guess you’re done with me here? I think I have some angst scheduled in about an hour. You know, brainwashed by the system, oh-god-what-have-I-done.” Yeah so that may not have been as sarcastic as I’d’ve liked it.

“Do it here,” Marine says. SDaC says nothing. I maybe shouldn’t be developing a crush on the guy who shot me... ah whatever. He’s probably straight as a laser.

“Not the best place for it, you know? I mean it’s a great place! Brilliant decoration with the misspelled lewd graffiti and I tell you the fallen cinderblocks and the open indefensibility of the place make it an exquisite contemplation on the true nature of freedom, but for a proper angst, you need, you know. Empty space. Rain falling on your head, dirty shoes, wind in your hair. In short, the outside world.” I think I stole part of all that straight out of something I wrote in middle school. You know how everyone goes through that emo phase? Mine had poetry.

Marine never wrote poetry. You can tell because he’s actually trying to make sense of what I just said. SDaC, on the other hand, knows bullshit when he hears it. I like that in a guy.

“You’ll manage. You’ll also stay here until we’ve decided what to do with you.” By his expression, he’d be perfectly happy if he was ordered to string me up by the nuts until dead. I’d be kind of less so.

“I’m sure I’d be all kinds of helpful in making that decision,” I tell him. Who designed the human face so it stops working when it gets hit? My charming grin is not working properly. On the other hand, this guy could probably resist Marilyn fucking Monroe, so I don’t waste my time feeling bad about it. Continue with the brave, if kind of stiff and swollen, face in adversity.

“You’re not helping anything. Une, keep him quiet.” He stalks off.

“Aw, dammit.” I slide back onto the wall. My shoulder twinges. Oh yeah, I had some revenge to take. Maybe later. Hey it sort of counts as revenge if I talk him into a good fuck, right?

So now I have nothing to do past re-read the communiques – which just makes me pissed off to the point that I slap the floor, which wasn’t high on my list of the best ideas I’ve ever had – and my only company is a guy who might as well be made out of tungsten.

I sit there for a while and emote pain and distress. Doesn’t work. I try bordom. Not a twitch does he give. Doesn’t even blink when I flop onto my good shoulder and try to grab some sleep. Fifteen minutes later I spend all the energy thus gained getting back into a sitting position.

“So. Marine. What’d you do to get the staring at prisoners gig?” I ask him, eventually. I think that might have been the slightest raising of an eyebrow! Fascinating. I press on in the name of research.

“I mean you were Spacer so you must’ve done something to get in their good books. Your boss kind of has trust issues.” Now he looks like he’s trying to decide if that’s close enough to an insult that he can hit me again, so I back off a bit.

On the upside, after a slight pause where that braincell works overtime to get the thought lined up with the mouth, he says, “Took care of something for them. Spy work.”

This killer worked as a spy? Fuck. Well, hell, I wouldn’t question a guy like him – okay so I would, but most people aren’t as buckfuck crazy as I am. On the other hand I’d be a shitty spy so that way out is not going to do so hot for me.

I tell him this, and he shrugs one shoulder. Helpful, extremely helpful. “So you think there’s any other kind of thing I could take care of? I can do tricks. Juggling, precision sniping, areospace engineering, I make a mean chicken alfredo-“ he looks up at me all sharp-eyed and I stop cold. Scary Marine is fucking scary.

“Tricks, huh?” he asks, looking interested for the first time. I bump my estimation of the cardinality of his neurons up to three. Unaware of my rising opinion of him, he clicks something on his belt – and you will not believe me but I swear to God, it’s an old-fashioned walkie-talkie, with a speaker/reciever and static and everything – and says, “Boss, need you here.” Then he clicks it off.

“Boss?” I ask.

“You met him.” Hah. I guess I guessed right. I knew he was in charge. Guy like that didn’t get that way taking orders.

“So what, you think he’s going to be terribly impressed by my stovetop skills?” I kind of hope so. On the other hand it’s probably as hard to get parmesan down here as it is to get titanium alloy, so maybe I should just let it be – nah.

Marine’s glare changes fractionally from ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about’ to ‘stop taking the piss’. I shut up, but only ‘cause I can hear stomping footsteps down the hall.

Boss walks in, looks at Marine, looks at me. I shrug and give a halfassed finger-wave. He rolls his eyes.

“Tell him what you said,” Marine says.

“The bit about the alfredo, or the bit about the trust issues?” I ask. God, do I ever listen before I open my mouth – wait, does that make sense? Never mind, doesn’t matter, it’s not making Boss like me any better.

“Sounds like you two had quite the conversation,” he drawls. “You got something useful or do I just fuck off ‘til you get bored again?” Marine glowers at me. Well, don’t want to make the guy with the big muscles mad at me. For the moment.

“Probably what he wants me to say is either ‘I’m a crack shot’ or ‘I built my own damn jet’. Both of which are true,” I toss off, casual-like. Hey, down here I might even get to reverse-engineer the new stealth shit! It’s all kinds of illegal upstairs, but hell, these guys are already getting bombs dropped on ‘em, so how much more damage can a little bit of copyright violation do?

Boss is impressed! Or maybe not, it’s hard to tell since his default expression is stuck on ‘tolerant skepticism’. I had a teacher like that in the eighth grade and I never knew if I was in trouble or not ‘til she was calling my parents in. Again. You know, being trapped in an open cell by a single representative of a backwards terrorist disorganization is significantly less embarassing than a parent-teacher conference in which you have to explain you really didn’t know the ceiling was inflammable.

Anyway, he says, “You built that? Shit, I almost feel bad about it now.” My stomach goes kind of watery. Must not sound weepy-emotional over my ship. Pissed-the-fuck-off-emotional is fine, though.

“What the hell did you do to my Stella?” I ask him. He does not look at all like he is feeling bad about something.

He shrugs. “SP is gutting it and taking it apart for scrap, but there wasn’t enough left of the computers or the skin to make it worthwhile. We flamethrowered it and scavenged the ceramics.”

“Fuck you! She took six years to get spaceworthy!” So okay about three of those were spent telling folks in bars ‘hey, I have a shuttlejet waiting for flight rights, wanna see my cockpit’ – that line works more often than you’d think – but seriously. “You killed my ship!”

“I ain’t the one who was flyin’ her,” he says. “Think of it like burnt bridges.”

“Burnt bridges I can get the fucking wood for, there’s no way I’m getting hold of enough titanium down here – or the workspace – damn it!” I am not going to pound my head against the wall in frustration, I am not, I am not – ow. Aw, fuck it, I’ll heal. Stella won’t. Nanobots aren’t that good yet, though dammit, they should be, it’s been like half a fucking century.

He does the smirking thing again. “Yeah, he’s an engineer. All good, we’ll put him with SingKueh and he can fix those damn fuel lines, we’ll see what he’s got.” Marine shrugs.
I can almost feel my knuckles slamming into Boss’s scarred-up cheekbone. I bet I could get out a tooth. Maybe he’s got a glass jaw.

“Still conscious,” I remind him, since, you know, I can hardly move right now so the only fighting I can do is verbal. “SingKueh’s the guy who tried to dismember me. Not conducive to a good working environment.”

“Most of us’ll be after your blood, spacer, but he won’t be if I tell him not to,” he says. Looks kinda bored. Wonder how many times he’s given this lecture? At least one – hell, it probably took a couple of times for it to take in musclehead here’s skull, so he must’ve gotten in some practice.

Faerie stories. Who these two are is not actually important. Only a few of these are real superstitions. 411 words.

Because there are things deeper than his own little life, the rider is careful. Never walk under a ladder, don’t follow the lights at night, never get between two mirrors. There are reasons.

He doesn’t have to worry it much though. Where he is now, nights are black and there is nothing to climb to and he hasn’t seen a mirror in six months, and wouldn’t look in it if he had. And his partner, he knows, too, and because his partner was born fast he doesn’t even have to think about the rituals anymore, just does them natural as breathing. Pour salt on tilled land if it spills, never look over your shoulder at a sunset, never hold a horseshoe upside-down.

The rider runs sand through his fingers in place of salt and hopes it holds. He resolutely looks ahead when he drives the herd east at dusk. Cross your fingers when you say someone’s name, put your shoes wrong way ‘round at night, don’t walk where a cat or fox has been.

Still he sees her, in the sixth or eighth week of driving. It’s sunset, and he hears something behind him; he glances back and stops, wheeling his horse. His partner flinches back, already picking up sand to throw in his eyes, but it’s too late; he’s caught the vision.

Later, when he’s drunk, the rider tells his partner, “a woman on a horse, but not on so much as of. She was part of it and it was part of her, and neither of them had the sense of a real horse and rider,” and his partner nods and says nothing, because the rider has told him this near fifty times now, dancing around the same wording every time.

It happens in just a moment, and after, the rider is as if it had never been; he blinks, fixes the loose tether that caused his distraction, and turns back to the trail. His partner gives a deep sigh of resignation, because he’s lost good men to this before. The rider looks solid as ever, but he has the wind and the fire in his soul.

When they reach the next town he tells anyone who will listen about what he’s seen. And when they’re going back, headed through the slow honey-coloured desert, their faces to the sunset, he does not stop when his partner turns to the south, but continues to the red edge of the sand.

It seems that I need to split my canon off from my fanfic, because I often decide later that old fics are out of character. Therefore retcons whee! But this? This is canon. Caution: may contain plot.

Kaos is out flying patrol when she all but slams into Fury’s floating castle. She spins backward, orienting herself to it. It’s both larger and darker than it was when it was still part of Mars. Fury is no longer what she was, and her home shows that. Even the aura – Kaos can hardly see the place.

She doubles back, because the first thing she should do is tell the Lady Leo that she’s found her sister. She doesn’t get far, though. Before she can get far enough away to teleport, something big and black and sharp runs into her and she has to spin on a wing-tip and get her feet on the castle, so that the stars are ‘up’.

The castle walls, old as the planets, are a dull ache through the soles of her boots. She stays down anyway, quietly bringing her staff to bear – she’ll take the discomfort for the cover offered by the decorations.

The big black sharp thing is one of Fury’s ravens, Kaos doesn’t know which. Doesn’t matter. It will have recognized her and that it’ll be wanting to take her to its master. She isn’t planning on going. She has no idea what Fury is capable of.

Behind her, something twitches on the edge of her perception. A wing and a shadow – the other raven. The distraction is just enough that the first one is able to dive toward her before she can attack. She swings her staff half-circle and uses the momentum to get out of its way, but it catches her on the leg. Broken.

It’ll heal but she can’t touch down. The other comes up beneath her in the half-second it takes her to assess the injury and flies straight into the blade of her staff. It screams, and feathers fly everywhere as it disappears.

It’ll have gone right back to Fury, but she can’t worry about that right now, there’s the first one to worry about and it’s on her all of a sudden and just as she brings her foot down on its wing, the shadows of the castle itself come out for her and her wings get fouled up in their blackness. She struggles, but it’s useless. Fury is a lot older than she is.

“Kaos,” she hears, and freezes, trying impossibly to hide her aura. Fury strides up the side of the castle with heels clicking, wearing a completely impractical dress of black silk and lace. Of course, she doesn’t need to be practical. This is her territory, and Kaos has just trespassed. If Fury wants her dead, she has very little choice in the matter.

“I wonder if you came here deliberately. But then you won’t tell me, will you?”

Kaos shakes her head and returns her mind to the somewhat futile task of getting her wings free.

“That’s okay, I’m sure I can talk for both of us.” Fury leans forward. “I want to know why you’re still on Leo’s side.”

Kaos ignores her, or tries to. She’s heard this argument a hundred times before and she doesn’t intend to start paying attention to it now, but Fury is very attention-getting. Especially when her shadows are pressing Kaos against her castle wall, and she’s about two inches from Kaos’s face.

“My sister is dangerous to us. She’s irrational. Uncaring. Despotic, even. Haven’t you noticed? How did you get those scars, Kaos? How have you died, the last three times? Don’t bother answering, I know.”

Kaos died, an uncountable number of times, doing her duty. The last time her body was two hundred and three and she threw herself in the path of an oncoming fire spell. The time before last her body was ninety-eight and the last thing she remembers is grabbing the cut ends of a thread that was supposed to have magic running through it. Three lives ago… she doesn’t remember. Oh, she knows, but that memory is gone along with everything before it.

Her face hasn’t moved, she’s sure, but Fury smiles when Kaos gets to that bit of her mental narrative. “You gave up your entire memory for her. You, and Destiny, and Wild, gave up a total of two and a half thousand years’ worth of built-up power and memory for a supernova that would close the gap between our universe and a parasite universe.” Fury’s face grows sharp, her eyes looking at something even Kaos can’t see. “Do you know why? It was on her say-so.”

“If she ordered it, it was necessary,” Kaos says.

Fury snorts. “No. No it wasn’t. She’s had her memory for more than eight thousand years. Right from the start. If she’d done it, it would have only been her who died. She asked you to do what she wouldn’t dream of doing.”

“I am loyal to the Lioness,” Kaos repeats.

“You didn’t get reincarnated for eighty years after that. You were lucky. Wild came back sixteen years ago as a wolf. A wolf! Her soul was so weak that she became an animal. And who knows how long it’ll be before Destiny returns to us,” Fury says. Her voice rises in pitch, her aura stabbing out wildly. “Your loyalty is to a woman who thinks you’re disposable!”

Kaos fixes her eyes on a point out in space and says nothing.

“You shut down when you’re out-argued. I had more respect for your stars, Virgo.” Bitterness, mostly, tinges Fury’s tone.

“I knew this, Aries,” Kaos replies.

“Then why haven’t you joined me yet?” Fury asks, but she’s defeated. The shadows start sliding away from her, letting her wings free to move. She tests them, preparing to fly off.

“Leo is the one to lead us. It’s in our stars.”

“You of all people know how mutable the stars are.” Yes, she sounds bitter. Not angry, but resigned, and her aura stops spiking, coiling in on itself like a snake.

“Those haven’t changed.” Kaos spreads her wings and takes to the sky again.

“Everything changes, Kaos. Everything,” Fury says, but Kaos barely hears her.

Sorry for the spam, but you know how it is. More Kylie and Daven - Kylie is probably going to show up a lot more, Daven may not.

You come down twice a week and ask about the Dawn Flash, which nearly never comes into port. It’s been six years, now, since the last time. Before that it was two, and before that, three and a half.

You wake on a grey-skied chilling morning and you know, just on instinct, that you have to go down today. You go to put on the shirt she saw you in last time, but something in you makes you reach for more stable, more standard clothes. Thick canvas and rivets, hobnailed boots, a herder’s uniform. You want to run to the docks but you turn out the horses and move the sheep first.

The Dawn Flash is there when you reach it and the dockworkers, who know you well by now, give you congratulations and admire her lines. She’s a beautiful ship, all sleek and elegant in fresh, white wood without a nest on it. You know little of ships and care nothing for its speed or maneuverability, too concerned with searching its deck for your wife.

She sees you before you see her, and shouts down to you. You grin and wave back. She’s always been beautiful just like her ship, sleek, wild, whipped thin by the wind. No lord or master but herself, captain of her ship and constant wanderer, she’s nearly gone feral. The wind flashes in her eyes, evident in every bit of silver around her wrists or in her hair, the wild smile she gives you.

She jumps from the prow of the ship and you catch her like a mountain in the path of a storm. You kiss her, and she kisses right back, tasting like rum and salt and the metallic tang of snow. You haven’t smiled in a year and a half and your face hurts, but now you’ve started, you can’t stop.

“I was starting to worry you wouldn’t be back,” you say, teasing but honest. She shrugs.

“It weren’t so long for us, we got stranded in some slow time. I ha’en’t aged but a year and eight months since last I saw you,” she tells you. You’ve heard of slow time but it sounds like a skies story to you, the kind of thing sailors tell after too much beer. You tell her so.

“So maybe it is, maybe it ain’t, I just know it were real. You ha’en’t e’er heard time’s all to do with where you are?”

You shake your head, and make to step off the docks; but she lets her feet touch ground, just barely. “You know I can’t.” It’s only here, on the docks, that you can meet her, at this place between air and land. She won’t come closer to stone and you can’t set foot onto sky.

“It’s not much of a marriage, is it?” you ask her, for the seventh time, because you have this same conversation every time she docks.

“Nay, it is, Daven. I love you – you know, don’t ya?” she says, and once again, you reassure her, and repeat the words back. They’re true. Your love for her spirals high as the skies and that does not change, even if you’re both on opposite ends of the world.

“I have to unload her,” she says, nodding to the Dawn, “but stay, or come back tonight.”

“Of course,” you say, and she kisses you again and leaves you to sit on a barrel and chain-smoke while she flits around the rigging, shouting orders to her crew.

For fullaquirkes. Happy Christmas!

For this fic, assume an AU where Dreams and Undying did not happen.

Well, they’re immortal, more or less. She a bit more than he, or maybe not. She’s come back from the dead before. Twice. He probably hasn’t, since most of the really nasty supernatural diseases don’t affect things like him.

She wonders why not. There should be some things, right? Shouldn’t there be a faerie version of lycanthropy? At the very least there should be some faeries, like some humans, who think that they’re something else.

****
James was dead. She’d known he’d die eventually, being human no matter how much he protested, but… he was dead. And he didn’t even have the decency to continue walking around.

She went to the funeral dressed as a bad imitation of a Goth, which got her a lot of stares, but allowed her to think he was still around, just a little bit. She sat in the front, just aside from his grieving children, who’d lost their mother just a year ago and now lost their father too.

No one knew who she was. She was much too young to be his best friend, almost his sister. He’d been in his eighties. She looked twenty-seven. She’d looked twenty-seven for sixty-nine years.
****

But she doesn’t spend much time with faeries. Not for a while now. Which is why, maybe, she’s so nervous about coming here.

No, that’s not even it. It’s him. Everyone’s nervous about him. Well, no, that’s not quite right. Everyone’s terrified of everything about him.

She is not terrified of him; she is fully in control of herself. She tells herself that over and over and only calms down a little when she realizes that it’s been three decades since he’s hunted her kind. He’s on to something else now, though she’s not sure what – nothing that anyone she hangs around with is.

She pushes the old glass door open, carefully. There aren’t any wards against her, so she steps inside.

This place is old and familiar – she knew it when the building around it was brand-new.

****
“If you walk three times widdershins around a liminal place, you’ll find yourself elsewhere. Usually it’s Faerie,” Rain said, eyeing the standing stone. “Remember Allvers? The weird seasons? That was a liminal place.”

“What’s widdershins? Wait, I know this one, it’s counterclockwise, right?”

“Yes. But it also means in the direction that you can’t see your shadow.”

He took her hand, sending a little shiver running up her arm to her spine, and led her around the standing stone, and they found themselves elsewhere.
****

She needs to go to Faerie. She breathes deeply and does so.

Nothing changes but the direction of the wind, but it’s enough. A world of new smells opens in front of her, strange grasses, stagnant water, something like blood but without the metal. She’s here.

“Ah, little one. I wondered how long until you came to me.”

He’s behind her. She turns around to see him perched on a fallen tree, his hair a bit longer, his clothing updated to be only fifty years out of fashion instead of a hundred, his eyes every bit as predatory as the last time she saw him.

****
“Where’s he gone?”

“Little one, even had he not asked me to keep that information from you, you haven’t the price to pay for it.”

“I could kill you right now.”

“I would have silver through your heart before you could so much as bark.”

“Where is he?”

“Go home, little one. I cannot tell you that.”
****

“Spare me the psychic act. I need information. Do you know what I need?” she asks. He can’t smell fear, not the way she can. He can see it, though. She does her best not to waver, not to shake. He won’t hurt her. She’s not dangerous. At the moment.

He smiles. She restrains the answering predatory growl. “I can hardly do both, little one… but at the risk of seeming psychic, I do know what you wish. The price is high.”

She throws the bag she’s carrying at his feet, where it lands with a clatter. “Latest microtech computers, three of them. Overclocked tazers. One of those palm-tops with a magical interface. Enough?”

He pulls the items out and inspects them, long delicate fingers dancing over the keys, running over the triggers, stripping and reassembling the weapons and pushing into the palm-top’s finger caps. Eventually, just when she’s ready to howl for something to break the tension, he puts them down and nods. “More than enough. Now, what exactly is it you require?”

She growls, hiding her relief in irritation. “Locations, times, dates, and tracking possibilities. And I want to know everything that’s been recorded about me. And him.”

****
They sat in a coffee shop. She wasn’t eating; she was picking at her sausage and hoping he wasn’t noticing her nerves. He probably wasn’t. Even over the confusion of scents wafting through the shop, she could make out the smell of faerie fear.

“I can’t stay around,” he said, holding his cup of tea like a lifeline.

“Why not?” she whined.

“You’ve – I told you about the dreams. I told you what would happen if you –”

“I had to, Rain, I didn’t have a choice! It was spring, you couldn’t’ve stopped me, I would have killed you!” she said. Her voice cracked.

“But now it’s fall, and you might kill me anyway,” he said.

“No,” she said. “I won’t kill a friend. I’m not like you.” She meant for it to be cruel, but regretted it right away. The self-loathing on his face was painful.

“I’m leaving, B. Please don’t try to follow me.”
****

“I see. Mounting a hunt, are we? It’s gratifying to see one such as you following in my footsteps.” He slips his fingers back into the palm-top, experimenting while he thinks.

“I. Am not. Like you,” she says, finishing with a whine that she covers with a growl. God, she hopes not. She’s got a reason, right? So she’s not exactly doing what he’s doing.

Anyway, her prey is going to still be alive at the finish, she hopes. Assuming she doesn’t kill him for being a complete jerk.

“Of course not, little one. I am much better at it.” She sighs. “If I weren’t, would you be coming to me to learn that he was last sighted on the fifth of this month at eight fifty-three local time, in a small bagel shop just east of Newport News, Delaware? And that he has been sighted in several such establishments on a fairly regular basis, all near towns with names that recall Newport? Sloppy of him.”

He’s not that sentimental. Maybe he really is that bad. She wouldn’t disbelieve it. But maybe it’s a signal.

Maybe he’s tired of running, and tired of waiting for her to catch up.

“I didn’t ask for your opinion,” she tells him. He smiles and nods. She is suddenly very, very tired, and she glares suspiciously at him, though she hasn’t heard a single note from his wings – and her hearing is very good nowadays.

She stifles her yawn but he notices anyway. “You should rest, little one. It’s the middle of the day.” He motions to the ground beside him, where there is a soft, mossy hollow. She shakes her head.

“I can’t. I’ll lose the time. He moves fast when he wants to.”

“Time moves differently here.” She knows that, doesn’t she? She’s heard it before.

“But we don’t know differently how.” She could wake up and find a hundred years have passed back home. Rip Van Winkle, only worse. Her lover would still be alive.

“It will be all right.” He’s always right, isn’t he? She’s not dangerous and he doesn’t hunt wolves anymore. The ground looks inviting. She’s so tired.

She steps forward, and he pats the spot near him – it’s condescending but well, it’s him. She curls up and sleeps.

****
She will be chasing him. She will look desperately through the crowd and finally, finally, see a shock of black hair, the edge of a trenchcoat. He will turn without sensing her into an alley and she will push through the masses of people, so that they’ll be all alone when she reaches the alley’s mouth.

She will shout out, “Rain!” and he will turn around in shock, not expecting that she’d still care enough to find him after five years. She will run and hug him and he will not react at first for surprise but will eventually pull her into a perfect, sweet embrace.

They will kiss. She will cry. He will try not to but his tears will leave rivulets in his white makeup. She will apologize for being too rash, he will apologize for being too chicken, they will kiss again. He will tell her she’s obsessed. She will tell him he likes it. They will climb the nearest fire escape and sit and catch up and in between questions make out like teenagers.
****

She wakes up to changed light, to his fingers running gently through her hair. She thinks at first it’s another’s touch, but they’re pulled away so fast she hardly remembers they were there.

“Good morning, little one. I have the information you asked for.” He waves his fingers, still in the caps. She sits up, then thinks better of it, and stands up. He’s still the one with all the power but she can assuage her anxiety a little if she feels like she’s got the upper hand.

“So what’s in there about me?”

“There’s not a lot. You’ve been covering your tracks well.” Courtesy of a few other friends of hers, mostly, and of the Hunter himself, though he’s polite enough not to mention that. “What there is I have put in this file,” he adds, waving his new computer, “which I have sent encrypted to your palm-top. You know the key.”

She does; a ten-twenty-four bit randomized key that would take years and massive resources to crack, if anyone could even get their hands on information sent through the faerie wireless. Faerie is slow to change, but it has many very old, very smart citizens. Faerie technology does amazing things with human bases.

“I shall have to remember that I owe you for the palm-top. An excellent piece of work.”

“Thank you,” she says, because one should never forget one’s manners in Faerie.

“You’re welcome, little one,” he says. “Do say hello to him for me, when you find him.”

“I’ll be sure to.”

She walks thrice sunwise around the standing stone and the wind shifts, bringing familiar scents: gasoline, sewage, iron-infused blood. She has her information, she has her prey, she must begin her tracking.

She walks forward.