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His eyes glimmered in the low light. Laughter was so glad to have been able to persuade him into the bar – he'd seemed hesitant at first, like he'd misunderstood what she was asking him. But here, in the warm light of the station, she could see it, and she was sure of it: Akihiro's eyes were warmer than they used to be.
She ran her finger around the edge of her glass, feeling it drag slightly against the wetness, and considered. Her darling's eyes were narrow, long-lashed, and bright, so bright – but they had the brightness of a star seen from far away. Perfect and bright and flickering, but something which could never be drawn close, into her own two arms.
Akihiro's eyes often seemed half-hidden, under that great bear-like furrowed brow. But there was a little hint of shining green in their dark brown hue, and lately, lately it seemed closer and closer to the surface. Easier to switch on.
“He's gone, you know?” she said brightly. “That's such a ridiculous thing that I don't know if I can actually think about it. Like, I know he's gone, but I don't KNOW it, you know? Ugh. I can't seem to find the words.”
“Yeah,” said Akihiro, darkly, staring into his beer. “I think I understand that.”
“You do? But I'm making such a pig's ear of telling you what I mean!”
He met her gaze with his sombre, heavy stare. “You told me you know it but you don't know it. So I think what you were saying is you know it, and you do think about it, probably all the time, but when you're not concentrating for a moment, or you wake up for your shift, it's stopped being true again, so you have to make it true in your mind.”
Laughter stared back at him, her mouth half open.
“Yeah,” she said in a small voice. “That.”
“Hurts, huh.”
“Yeah.”
Akihiro took a deep swig of beer, and appeared to be lost in thought.
“Better with company.”
“Yeah,” she agreed, and leaned forward from her bar stool, to rest her head against his gigantic chest. She thought for a moment that she was about to susprise or shock him, or at least make him uncomfortable, but he seemed to half expect it, and he rested one hand on her shoulder gently. They stayed like that a long time, with him taking the occasional sip of his beer, and neither of them saying anything at all. She didn't cry. She wasn't ready to.
Laughter sat up again, slightly reluctantly. She felt sure she'd been missing something about Akihiro. Nobody changed that quickly just because they had a different job. She'd think it was because he'd met a girl for the first time, except she was the girl, and she didn't feel with any conviction that she'd tried to alter him in any way. What was going on with him?
It was hard to think clearly at the moment, through the thick, thundering throb in her head, booming low with her heartbeat he's gone, he's gone, she's gone, the ship is gone and you're homeless and adrift, but she still caught somewhere in herself a glimpse of guilt for how she'd treated Akihiro in the past. She'd thought he was brutal, an oafish man, just meat. She'd met men like that before, and still believed sincerely that there were men out there who were only as much as they appeared to be. But if Akihiro was just a soldier, a soldier with nothing else to him, why accept her offer of a drink? Why try to help her find the right words? Why sit completely still while she rested her head upon his chest?
There were other things, too – his closeness with the Brewer kids, and his calm attentiveness as he watched over them. She'd seen a hen once in real life, impossibly large, with a longer, sharper beak than she'd ever expected. It had had a huge, puffed out chest, and the cleverest eyes she'd ever seen on an animal. It had glared at her like a king from its throne of squeaking chicks, as they struggled to get close enough to feel safe. It never once looked at the little yellow puffballs as they rammed into its feathers – it just stared at her.
He was like that.
“You're good at putting feelings into words, aren't you?”
“I don't know. I don't think so.” He looked down into his remaining beer, and swirled it experimentally. “I think you're easy to understand, because you don't hide anything. You tell people what you're feeling even if you think it doesn't make sense.”
That one hurt. Not just because there were things she hadn't told him which were personal to him, but because there were things she hadn't told him that were personal to her. Things she didn't talk about, as a rule. Meeting her darling (he's dead, he's dead and he's not coming back) had been the day she was born. Why bother with any of the stuff that came before? Except she knew it would matter to Akihiro. And she was beginning to realise that she actually wanted to tell him.
“I think there are lots of things I've hidden. I hope that doesn't make you like me any less,” she said, the words sounding slightly hollow.
“No, not at all...” He fixed her with that unwavering gaze. “It would make me like you more. Because I know I do the same.”
Laughter drained her glass, feeling she deserved it.
“Another, please,” she called through the quiet bar. She was served.
“Akihiro... to us,” she said, a little self-consciously. She'd never toasted anything before, but she was pretty sure she knew how it was done. She raised her glass, and tipped it slightly, gesturing to Akihiro that he should do the same. “To us, who'll like each other no matter what we find out.” He raised his glass and she gently knocked hers against his, enjoying the clink.
“To us,” he agreed, solemnly, “who are who we are now.” He clinked his back against hers, and drank deeply, finishing his pint.
Laughter ate the cherry thoughtfully.
“I will cry, you know,” she informed him. “I just don't want to yet.”
“It's okay if you don't,” he replied, taking her slightly by surprise with his disagreement. It must have shown: he shifted a little awkwardly on his stool. “I mean. Not crying doesn't mean you don't care. I don't think you have a lot of time to cry right now, right? So maybe that's why. But even if you had all the time in the world, you could sit there for days and not cry and that wouldn't mean it didn't hurt.”
“It does hurt, but it hurts like I can't feel it yet. Have you ever really burned yourself?”
“Yeah. It doesn't hurt until ages after you let go. Even though you know the pain's going to be there, because it's all gone numb.”
“Like that.”
“Yeah.”
Akihiro placed his glass on the bar, and moved it slightly towards the bartender, who refilled it without a word. He watched the foam settle for a while. Laughter ran her finger around the edge of her new glass.
They both spoke at the same time. “I should –” began Akihiro, while Laughter tried “So...”
Laughter laughed, despite herself. Akihiro smiled.
“Who's going first?” she asked, brightly.
“I don't mind. I promise.”
“Right, then it's me, because I was finally going to tell you right then, and it was really hard to get it together. Sorry if you feel the same, but you said you didn't mind.”
“I don't.”
“Okay. So Darling's gone, and it's fucking awful, but I kind of know you probably don't know all that much about what the deal with us was? With him and all his wives?”
Akihiro stared fixedly at a knothole in the wood of the bar. “Didn't think it was any of my business.”
My heart, thought Laughter, unbidden. It hurt though, because she was supposed to feel like this about her darling. And she did and him being gone didn't change that... but here was Akihiro, six foot five of confused muscle, sitting neatly on a too-small bar stool and politely waiting for her to clarify... everything. She felt she owed it to him to try.
“We all loved him,” she said, trying to keep her voice calm and even. “We all went with him. We were definitely his girls, like he always said. But... well...”
She sighed, sipped her drink, twirled the end of her bunched hair and tried again.
“It's not that he didn't have enough love to go around, because he did. And he was never bad to any of us, not one, for a minute. And I loved him! I... love him.”
“I know,” said Akihiro, in a reassuring grumble. He put his hand on her knee.
“Not... all of us are as good at sharing as Darling and Big Sister though.” She sighed. She'd said it. “They never stopped anybody from leaving. When they were ready to.”
Akihiro watched her with careful eyes.
“They thought I was ready to. They knew I was going to stay with Tekkadan eventually. Urgh, this isn't the part that's hard to talk about though. Not really. We've never told you how Darling came to have so many women.”
“Yeah.” The big hand squeezed slightly. Akihiro's beer sat forgotten on the bar.
“He's... a really special guy, you know?”
“I know. I didn't get to know him well, but I knew people who loved him. And I trust their opinion. Must have been very special, to be loved by people like that.”
Laughter tried not to tear up. Akihiro knew exactly what to say, before she even knew she wanted to hear it.
“I'm not ready to cry yet, dammit,” she told him, but a small stream made a valiant attempt to flow from her itching, tired eyes for just a moment, before she aggressively rubbed it away with the cuff of her jacket. She sniffed loudly, and the bartender glanced at her for a moment before looking away.
“Okay, so it's like this. He got into shipping, right?”
“Okay.”
“And d'you know how many hauliers on the worst routes are women?”
It was like a brighter light came on behind Akihiro's eyes. “I've heard something about it, yes...”
“There's a lot of girls out there who... get into real bad situations.”
“I can imagine. If guys get messed around badly, I'm sure people take worse advantage of girls.”
“Heh. Yeah.” Laughter looked at the floor for a bit. It seemed very far away. “I joined a shipping company when I was fourteen. I was having a bad time with my foster family and I just needed to get away. I dropped out of school and I left a note swearing up and down I was fine. And I was, for a bit. It was pretty good for, like, three months. But then... we were a long way from Earth, or any of the colonies... and suddenly my pay envelope seemed thinner and thinner, and when I tried to ask about it, the boss got angry, and... things got weird real quick.”
Akihiro's stern face, his set jaw – that was all the response she felt she needed.
“You know. Sex stuff and that.”
“Figured.”
“Yeah.”
She sipped her drink. “No, I'm gonna say it! Fuck not saying it. That son of a bitch isn't in charge of me.” She slammed the half-full glass onto the bar, not caring that the bartender was looking again. “He tried to tell me I was being uncooperative, that it cost a lot to have me trained up. That if I was more agreeable my pay would go back to normal, and maybe I'd get a better position in the company. So he started fucking me most nights, and just when I thought I was kind of used to it, he started inviting his stupid fuckhead friends to – to have a go too. That's how he saw it.”
She took a breath, and didn't meet Akihiro's eyes before she tried again to finish. Telling him all of this was a marathon, and she she could see the end in sight.
“All Darling's girls were like that. He went around buying up small companies and dominating shipping routes, and hiring on women who weren't happy. Which was, like, all of us. He had so many people by the end, not just the ladies you met on the Hammerhead. We're not gonna let that fail. Azee and me, we're gonna make sure. We're gonna keep Turbines alive. Otherwise,” she sniffed again, as a few more tears escape, and wiped them fiercely. “why did he do all that for us?”
Akihiro, appearing to sense that she'd finished for now, smiled at her. Across his broad face even a smile radiated strength. “Because he loved all of you.”
“Yeah.” She hid her face in her sleeve.
“And you love him.”
“Yes!” She looked back up at him. Something about the way he'd used the present tense for her darling... it strengthened her. Her and Azee, they were going to get through this. It was going to be fine. Great, even. Sure, the Hammerhead was gone, and they'd lost two beloved members of their big, beautiful family – and sure, there was Akihiro and the rest of Tekkadan to think of – but they had the skills, they had the knowledge. They were going to keep protecting the Turbines.
“Is that...” Akihiro seemed unusually delicate in his choice of words. “...the whole of what it upset you not to have spoken about?”
“Sorry?” asked Laughter, a little confused.
“I just wanted to make sure there wasn't worse you hadn't said yet. Nothing you had to tell me changes anything. I'm glad to know more about you.” His big caterpillar eyebrows were furrowed in concern. She laughed, despite everything.
“Nah. That's it, if you can call it 'it.' Had sex with a bunch of crap people for a few months, fell in love with a weird polyamorous guy who wore suits literally all the time he had clothes on, didn't like sharing, and now I can't anyway. That's basically my life.”
“What about your parents?” he asked, with mild concern.
“Inadequate. I mean, that's what it said on the actual form. I haven't seen him since I was three, and she had a bad drug problem. They wanted to let me stay with her, but it wasn't going well in the end, so foster care from when I was eleven. Got moved around a lot. Met some really nice people but the schools sucked and it's hard once you're already used to things, you know? Don't mind talking about it but I don't think there's a lot to say. I know it's not really an unusual story, and I've met a bunch of sisters who've had worse. What... about you?”
It had been so hard to say all of it that she knew she'd dominated the conversation for ages. And she knew Akihiro had had something eating at him too.
“My parents? They were really good to me. We came from Mars. There wasn't a lot of work where they could be near us, so we... we were in haulage too.”
“Us? Oh – Masahiro, wasn't it? I'm so sorry about him. I didn't know you well then, but it must have been awful.”
“...Yeah. It was pretty bad.”
“Is that...” she trailed off, feeling inadequate.
“What I want to talk about? I guess, yeah.” He made no move to talk.
“So, you lost your brother... what happened to your parents?”
“Killed. Pirates.”
Two words being used to mean a whole lot more. Laughter wanted very badly to chew her fingernail, but she'd got them looking so good lately. She fidgeted with her earring instead.
Realising Akihiro wasn't going to talk, she decided she'd better say something reassuring, the way he had for her.
“That must have been completely shit for you.”
“I...” Akihiro drew back from Laughter. He folded his arms in his lap. Stared at his hands. “I know now that I was a child. But I still can't tell myself I didn't fail them.”
“What? What were you supposed to do?”
“Protect Masahiro. I was bigger than him. I was meant to watch out for him. But I wasn't strong enough – or I didn't fight hard enough – or I should have found a way to convince them not to separate us.”
Some nagging detail was starting to haunt the edges of Laughter's thoughts. “Pirates took your brother away from you?”
“Yeah,” he said, stonily, and stared at the floor. It was several minutes before he spoke again. Laughter could feel her heartbeat in her mouth somehow.
“They... sold us to separate people.”
Oh.
“I'm sorry I didn't understand...” said Laughter, quietly. “I knew Masahiro had been... living as debris, but I didn't know it had happened to you too. I just never imagined it. Wow.”
“Mmmm.”
“How old were you when they took you away?” She tried to picture a version of Akihiro too small to protect people, and found it difficult. Akihiro had first entered her awareness of the crew as a sort of walking wall, and it had taken a long time for her to feel she knew him as a person in any sort of meaningful way. But then, given what he'd just told her... perhaps that made sense.
“I was eight. He was five. I guess he hardly remembered anything else when I saw him again... I got so lucky when they sold me to Maruba.”
“Maruba?”
“Maruba Arkay. Guy who founded CGS. He bought a bunch of human debris at the same time, when the company was first expanding.”
“CGS is the old name of Tekkadan, isn't it?” asked Laughter, alarmed.
“Kind of. First order Orga gave was that we weren't debris any more, and we could go if we wanted.”
“But that... that was really recent, right? Wasn't Tekkadan formed right before I met you?”
“Yeah, I guess. I always thought nobody had ever told you, because you never mentioned it, and I think it would be a big deal for most people. You know they usually do debris uniforms with red lines? Do you remember now how a lot of us still had our old jackets when you joined?”
“Oh yeah – just a regular CGS jacket, but with a stripe down one side?”
“Every man with that stripe was in Third Group's human debris unit. They wanted us in regular uniforms but the stripe was to make us stand out, because we slept separately, ate separately, all that kind of thing. They didn't really want us mixing.” A hollow feeling began to gnaw at Laughter's stomach, making her wish she hadn't had anything to drink at all.
“My god. But that's – you, it's Dante, and Chad, and –”
“Yeah.”
“It's a lot of people! I had no idea.” Awful, awful, awful.
“Well, I didn't know about Naze's women.”
“It's sort of the same, but...”
“It's a big deal that I didn't know about the stuff you had to deal with. But it's pretty unusual for human debris to be offered their freedom again, yeah.”
Again. Most human debris were pretty young, after all. It was hard to imagine human debris who lived long enough for more debris to be born into their... situation. So they'd all been born as people.
Laughter had met human debris before becoming involved with Tekkadan. It wasn't as though she'd approved of the system, but she'd had herself to take care of, and by a long shot had always lacked the power to do something about it. And... she realised, with a twisting vinegar feeling in her stomach, she'd seen their hollow, dead eyes, and heard the way they'd responded to commands as if they were tools. Maybe she'd never thought much about them because she hadn't thought they were worth saving.
And now here was Akihiro, with his kind hands, and his giant eyebrows, and the soft way he spoke to the Brewer kids he'd given his name to. And his eyes which used to be colder.
It made so much sense out of everything. Was this how he'd felt when she'd explained how she came to be one of Naze's girls?
A thought occurred to her.
“Was everybody okay about it?” she asked. “I mean, you suddenly being the same as everyone else again?” She took care with the 'again.' It seemed to be important.
“Yeah. I think if things ever changed that much for me now, I'd feel worried about it, especially for the others. I was the leader of the debris in Third Company – I mean, it didn't mean anything, it's not like they paid me for it, but I had people who looked up to me and needed orders and answers from me. But back then I just thought it was more of the same. It took a really long time – months, even – before things felt different to me at all. Debris go where their owners tell them to go. What's the difference between dying from a gunshot wound in the sun on Mars, or dying in an explosion in the Outer Earth Sphere? You're just as dead either way.”
Laughter didn't want to stare, but everything he said came with so great a weight. The kind of weight that could drag a person down. Except when she heard it she didn't feel pulled down, exactly. That's not how directions worked in space. The gravity in Saisei was caused by centrifugal motion – totally artificial. Unmoored to the Hammerhead and unmoored to the floor, she felt pulled to the nearest heavy thing. And now it seemed to her that nothing in the solar system could be heavier than this broad, muscular man, telling her how he used to not care how he would die.
She had no idea how to respond to Akihiro, so she was incredibly pleased to realise he wasn't done.
“It would have been fine even if people had something to say about it – which I don't think they did – because Orga told them to do it.”
“You all feel like that about him?”
“We'd all still be on Mars if it wasn't for him, and I know not all of us would be alive.”
Laughter squirmed on her stool. “You didn't all make it anyway...” She didn't like to say it, but she didn't like to think of Akihiro following anybody without question, friend or not.
“But we chose to be there. Bunch of people walked right at the start, and I know Takaki quit after the Earth Branch fiasco.”
“If you had walked, though... what would your options have looked like? Do you think people would have accepted Orga making that decision about your status?”
Akihiro thought about this. “I think that would have been different for each of us. I might have passed for a quiet person. I knew how to read and write, and I'd had more... autonomy than the others. But I know some of my group probably wouldn't have had much idea of what to do with themselves at all. If they found a job with a reputable person, they probably would have been okay. If they hadn't... they'd have been debris again within the day. Maybe me too, if the wrong person got wind of what I'd been doing with myself for all those years.”
“It wasn't exactly a real choice then?”
“I guess not. But he tried to give me all the choice he could. Means a lot.”
Laughter smiled into her glass. “Sounds familiar.”
“Oh!” said Akihiro, an edge of realisation in his voice.
“All that, and romance,” she agreed.
“Orga's really hoping to be able to get his body back for you,” confided Akihiro, suddenly remembering. “He thought the world of your – Naze.”
He was right; that name wasn't for him to use. Laughter felt tired. She put her glass down again.
“So are we going to kiss or what?”
Akihiro's face was as hard to read as ever. “Would you like to?” he asked, impassively.
“Yeah. You?”
“You're beautiful, and you're clever and you're funny and you're strong. You make me feel stuff I didn't know I could feel. Of course I want to kiss you.”
Laughter nearly fell off her stool with the force of it all. How could he be thinking all that without even smiling? He'd never be one to wear his heart on his sleeve, that much was clear now. She laughed, loudly: she couldn't help it.
“So you want to know what I think of you?”
He met her eyes. “If you like.”
“I think you're... an enigma. I don't know how somebody comes through everything you've seen and done and still makes people laugh like you. You're the biggest, strongest person I've ever met, but you're so soft and gentle with the Brewers. You're clever. I trust you and your judgement completely. And I should feel homeless and afraid right now, but you're here, so it kind of feels like everything's still going to be okay.”
“You're the only one who laughs at me, you know.”
“I'm also the only one offering to kiss you, right now. Are you going to complain?”
He tasted of salt. It felt like coming home.