Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Prologue 

"You can't go two days without telling folks where you come from. Why, if the past ain't important?"
"It's...complicated."
- TAH #157

With the constant relocation their parents’ work foists upon them, USSA brats have to get good at socializing.

New school, new planet, new species – for a lot of kids, the constant movement makes the whole process easier. If they strike out this group, they can try with a new batch eight months later.

So despite the common conception, most USSA brats make friends.

Sparks is not one of them.

He's already a curiosity for being one of the few children of starship captains actually born and based on Earth, not in the air. This makes pretty much everything about his bones and blood and heart wrong for living in space. But Caiaphas got on his high horse about his sons being proper, "Earth-born Americans", and so Sparks is subject to a litany of injections and foul tasting medicines until he's ten, just to make sure he lives. Kids make up all kinds of stories about how his eyeballs are going to pop out, or that he'll go looney and start biting if he's off-planet for too long.

He’s small for his age, and skinny. No good at sports – Stacy blames the asthma he definitely does not have, Caiaphas blames a bad attitude –and no matter how far away they are from a sun, the orange freckles sprayed across his face like an explosion don’t get any fainter. (Carson called him a Jackson Pollock painting, and once Sparks looked up what that meant, he tried to punch him.) Whenever he even thinks about talking to a girl, his throat closes up or worse, won’t, and he starts babbling like a lunatic. 

He imitates the way his father talks, in brusque, gravelly asides, hoping it will make the other kids respect him, but it just makes them think he’s weird, mimicking him with crossed eyes every time he walks by – Sparks has Earth Madness!

Carson tries to help. He teaches him to shoot a laser pistol, aiming for the cans he programmed to hover at the end of the USS Indomitable’s hall. He makes Sparks do it again and again until he hits every single one with his eyes closed and draws almost as fast as Carson himself can.

They camp out under the stars and he tells him to be tough, that if people don’t like Sparks that’s their loss. Keep his head down, keep practicing his shooting, and pretty soon people will take notice, and not in the mocking way. That they’re Nevadas and Nevadas are not quitters. They’re from Earth. And that's an advantage, not a shame.

Nobody ever teases Carson, or thinks he's fragile. Tall, broad, and square-jawed like their father, inheriting their mom’s dark, wavy hair. He’s always getting in good with whoever they meet on a new planet. Within days, he’s usually found a girlfriend. Mostly human, but the ones who aren’t, he hides from their father. (Sparks privately thinks his big brother could bring home, like, a boy Martian, and Dad wouldn’t bat an eye as long as he was still the rising star at the academy.) He aces every test, every sim, graduates with the highest honors and an offer to captain his own ship as soon as he gets married.  

And then he dies.

Sparks is sixteen, and enjoying a rare month back on Earth. His parents have finally, finally deemed him old enough to stay on-planet by himself. He’s out in the sand dunes, riding his horse in circles so he can practice shooting cans while on the move, when his arm vibrates, an incoming communication from the Indomitable.

If you’re not already outside, get there. We are beaming you up. Urgent.

There was an altercation. That’s was his mother keeps saying, her voice getting tighter and tighter. The ship Carson served as a lieutenant on stepped in to stop a land dispute on Pluto and got tied up in the battle. And Carson, the golden boy who drew faster than anyone, couldn’t beat a Plutonian to the trigger.

Caiaphas spits out every dirty slur for an alien he can think of, Stacy weeps in his arms, and the Indomitable takes off across the solar system to reign hell down on every last Plutonian who took their son from them. There is so much fire, so many barked commands and flashes of light. In the chaos, nobody remembers to send Sparks below deck, but after awhile he can’t look out at the battle anymore. So he stares down at his boots, still caked in sand and dirt. They were hand-me-downs.

There’s a funeral and then a tribunal where his parents are found not guilty of war crimes in their grief-soaked slaughter. His father slams into the family’s living quarters on the ship and presses a USSA acceptance letter into his lap. Sparks understands; Now the burden falls to him.

Going to the academy is like being a kid again, only a thousand times worse. He’s still too thin, freckly and ginger, and his classmates stare at him when they hear his last name. Nevadas are murderers, Nevadas are trouble. Nevadas all get Earth madness. This time, he has no one to protect him, to make him practice hitting back.

So he learns to make himself practice.

He gets gruffer, and the voice doesn't sound so silly now that he's older, stronger, throws out all but one of his inhalers. He cuts his hair close on the sides and learns to take a gun apart and put it back together in thirty flat. He reads everything he can get his hands on, mountains of paperwork logged from old missions, near-escapes, no-escapes. He runs through the simulations again and again, even after all the administration buildings are closed and a janitor has to kick him out.

He meets Mercy Laredo when they're both twenty, and she’s his first everything, all in one night. He comes on too strong, grinds against her too hard, does everything too much with an energy that borders frenzied. He wants to reach up and pull the sky down on top of them as they fuck, bury them in the stars.

They’re lying on their backs after, still naked and breathing hard, when Mercy tells him he’s a bad kisser. He snaps back that he’s only been doing it for about an hour – and has himself a panic in the vein of Please Don’t Tell Anyone. She just smirks, pins down his wrists, and his hips snap up to meet her’s for another round. He likes practicing this, too.

Life becomes something like good, a binary of playing hero in the simulators and having sex with Mercy back in the real world. He gets better grades than anyone in his year. His reports are impeccable. He learns how to properly go down on a woman. People still think he’s weird, but now it’s because he’s intense and grouchy and fills out his jackets. Nobody mentions his family. Nobody is surprised when he's chosen to act as captain in their class's no-win scenario final; it's a clear dry run, almost a formality, before the USSA gives him a ship of his own. 

And then everything goes to shit.

He’s standing behind the command center, alarms blaring, lights flashing. Mercy is shouting at him, so are his other classmates, the comms are jammed, the bad guys closing in. He says it’s fine. Mercy tells him their chances of survival are .0001%. He still says it’s fine. His fake crew starts walking out the real door, and his feet are glued to the floor. He doesn’t see the simulated window in front of him, but the gray, battered surface of Pluto, feels the room shaking around him, because he can’t give up, he can’t just let him die–

Someone from the observation deck – he finds out fifteen years later it was his mother - slams the ABORT SIM button, and the entire room goes dark. He closes his eyes and finds them wet.

When his parents come into his dorm a few hours later, his father gives him an uncharacteristically gentle pat on the head. They talk about no-win scenarios. They argue about his future, retaking the exam. Caiaphas asks him if he wants to end up working on some podunk planet for the Coalition.

Nobody actually wants to say the words, “froze up” and “flashback” and “Carson”, so they fight about his grades instead.

The minute they leave, Sparks throws his clothes into his bag, sends Mercy a goodbye, and slips out into the night. He goes back to the desert, and falls asleep in his old boots. They’re a little too tight, now. But the dirt sticks to them.

He couldn’t be the perfect, pragmatic soldier. He was never going back to being the weakling who needed someone else to save him. There had to be somewhere in the middle where he fit. Where he could grow his hair out, but still outdraw anyone he met. Be the hero, in the black-and-white, save-everybody-with-no-exceptions kind of way. To be the kind of man Carson was. But better. One that stays suspicious and stays alive.

He stays out in the sun and lets it warm his bones, gives himself an entire day and night to be missing, and to miss his brother. After that, he freezes up that part of his heart, lets it calcify and spend it’s days ignored. His boots fill up with sand. He lets them get as dirty as they can, and then never wears them again.

Nevadas aren't quitters, they're adapters. They're survivors. They're... from Earth.

The boots break several health code violations when he brings them on the ship to Mars seven years later.

Red, a friend like him just when he’d given up hope, asks why he always brings up where he’s from, not where he is. Sparks finds his hand drifting to touch them where they live in the bottom drawer of his desk.

“It’s… complicated.”

Chapter Text

Sixteen years of emotional repression later...

Ginny and Sparks finally settled into some semblance of normal six months after their wedding.

They got a little house on the edge of town; Sparks built shelves, Ginny made curtains and bedspreads, all striped red-and-white. They don’t talk about the real Virginia West, who Sparks demanded be released from her mining prison on Jupiter and set free to troubleshoot through the cosmos at will, or about the way Ginny – his Ginny, the one everyone in town privately and silently labels the real Ginny – sometimes woke up with different colored hair, eyes, or skin. He went to work, and Ginny looked for a new line of employment, preferably one that let her sneak around. They ate breakfast and dinner together. They went on walks, and watched the Martian sunset. They made love, and Sparks couldn't deny the “shifting into different looking women” thing didn’t sometimes have it’s perks.

Ginny decided to become a bounty hunter, in large part because it let her wear disguises. Sparks offered to just toss her his own stolen license – “you match the gender better” – but Ginny was determined to get her own, make a fresh start. Or as fresh a start as you can with a stolen name and face. She passed the test as easily as anyone (and it is so, so easy), and seemed to enjoy her first and second weeks on the job. He catches bad guys on salary. She catches bad guys on commission. They’re happy.

Until week three.

She slammed into the doors of the Marshal station one afternoon when he’s elbow-deep in paperwork, knocking her fist against the plated metal door. Red looked up from her own desk and rolled her eyes.

“Trouble in paradise?”

“Spark-icus!” Ginny shouted, and he really, really should’ve seen what she was months earlier, with all the stupid ways she nicknames him. “Opening the door would really be in your best interest, at present moment!”

“Well, this oughta be good,” Red said, a shit-eating grin on her face.

Sparks groaned. “No, don’t enjoy this–”

The Marshal station doors are open.

Ginny stomped over to his desk, guns still strapped to her hips, long dark hair pulled back tight from her face; bounty hunting clothes. “Hello, honey."

“I am in trouble for something, is what I’m sensing.”

Ginny’s face was tight, matching her arms crossed over her chest. “I thought,” she said, clipped and pissed, “that we were past the ‘lying to each other’ stage in our relationship.”

Sparks racked his brain for some way in which he’s deceived her lately. He didn’t wash the dishes last night when he said he would, but that’s hardly a reason to storm down to his place of business.

“Why didn’t you tell me you have a brother?”

The dull ache in his chest surprised, but only because of its spontaneity. He trained himself to accept the pain at certain times; on Carson’s birthday, on the anniversary of his dying, when he’s been on a particularly exhausting call with his parents and wished he had someone understanding to complain to. Most days, decades removed from the death, he doesn’t think about his brother at all. Not callousness, self-preservation.

He felt Ginny and Red still looking at him, waiting for an answer. He quickly pounded his chest with his fist in hopes of dislodging the feeling.

“Because I don’t, really? He is...super dead.” A sharp intake of breath from Red, and this is why he doesn’t tell people. He learned a long time ago it was much easier, day to day, to be branded an only child than as The Guy Whose Brother Died Violently. “Don’t go crying about it, it’s what it is.”

Red shook her head, mildly disgusted, but Ginny frowned.

“What are you talking about?” she said. “He died? When? How?”

Sparks reached into the bottom drawer of his desk, runs his fingers over his old, earth-covered boots, that were Carson’s before his. Croach is the only one who knows they’re there, and his declaration they were “like a blanket a youngling uses to create the false equivalent of security” was a pretty good deterrent for Sparks not showing them to anyone else.

“Long time ago, I was still a kid. He was a USSA officer, got caught up in a bad shootout on Pluto. Wait, how did you find out about him?”

Ginny uncrossed her arms. Her whole body seemed to go limp, and wary. “Carson Joshua Nevada, born 2968, Earth. Human. That’s your brother.”

Sparks’ throat felt tight. “Okay, that ain’t funny.”

She held out the communicator strapped to her wrist, pressed her thumb against it so the whole screen lit up. “Do you see me laughing?”

A grainy picture accompanied the name, date, and species she'd rattled off. Sparks recognized it, the official USSA headshot to go on every badge. It was old, probably taken a little over a year before he died. Dark hair, broad shoulders, big grin. Forever twenty-two.

Underneath the photo read the line Last seen in the western quadrant. Bounty, 115,000 credits.

Red walked over and peered over Ginny’s arm as well. “Why would someone put out a bounty on Nevada’s dead kin?”

“This is some kind of identity hustling,” Sparks said. “Someone stole his name, starts racking up trouble.”

Ginny didn’t seem allayed by this. Her eyes bore into him. “This picture is right, though? This is what he looked like?”

“Yeah. Why?”

“Because add twenty earth years, and this fella is sitting at our house, looking for you.”

Red, Sparks, and Ginny rode back to the West-Nevada homestead, and nobody even had to enter the house to see what in the hell she was talking about. Sitting on the front steps in a dusty jacket and boots, was Carson. A little thicker round the middle, gray streaks in the hair around his temples, faint lines on his handsome, square face, but unmistakably him.

He was also tied to the railing of the steps, wrists laced around a spindly pole with Ginny’s glowing purple handcuffs.

Sparks dug his spurs into Mercury’s sides, even though his horse had already slowed to a stop. He was afraid he’d fall off the side if he didn’t hang on as hard as he could. “Ain't those your troubleshooter handcuffs?” he asked dumbly.

Ginny frowned. “So?”

“You ain’t a troubleshooter anymore, you should give those back.”

“Virginia can buy her own!”

“Virginia shouldn’t have to buy her own!”

Red coughed. “Could you two love birds maybe save this cute conversation for a different time?”

Ginny jumped off her horse, holding her hand up to help Sparks down. “You’re glad I had ‘em today, aren’t you? Otherwise you sure wouldn’t have believed me.”

“That my dead brother has somehow turned up on our step? Yeah, probably not.”  He crouched down in front of the steps, ostensibly to get a better look at Carson, but also because he felt steadier on his haunches.

“You gotta stop calling him that, Nevada, when he clearly ain’t.” Red’s hands were still on her guns. “After the whole business with Croach, maybe we should just start assuming everyone is coming back from the dead eventually.”

“I’m not dead, darling, never was.” Carson piped up. Sparks did fall over then, right on his ass in the dirt of his front lawn. He hadn’t heard his brother’s voice in God knows how long. Wasn’t really one to wallow in the dark, watching old holographic videos. But there it was, out of the clear red sky, rough and easygoing at the same time.

He felt Ginny reach under his arms and lift him upright again. She stayed standing behind him, bracing a hand on the small of his back to keep him standing, and he loved her all over again for it. “Carson. Why… how.”

“Look at you, my God,” Carson grinned. “All grown up.”

“Yeah, I–it’s been twenty years, I aged. ”  

“He was the littlest kid,” Carson said to Red and Ginny, absurdly conversational. “70 pounds soaking wet. I thought he’d maybe been switched out with some changeling from a miniature alien race as a baby.”

“Oh my–please, tell me every embarrassing story about his childhood,” Ginny said.

Something released in Sparks’ spine. He pushed himself out of her grip, and curled his robot fists. He’d forgotten to take them off, and was liking that decision now.  “Oh. I get it. Very funny, assholes.”

“What are you talking about? What is he talking about?” Carson asked.

“I should've told you about all my dirty laundry. You made your point. I caught you, you can change back.”

“Ahhh,” Red said, because she got it, she almost always did. “Pretty good trick, Carson. If that is your real name.”

“Which it’s not,” Sparks added.

“What was your parents' deal, anyway? They used up all their ideas for human names on him?"

“Alright, the Red Plains Rider. ”

“Someone kindly tell me what’s happening?” Ginny said.

“That ain’t Nevada’s brother,” Red drew her gun on the being claiming to be Carson. “It’s one of your Jupes.”

Ginny gaped. “Okay, first of all, that’s our word. You can’t say that word, Mars-girl.”

Red shrugged, still trained on the steps. “I just did.”

“Secondly, you think I'd create a fake bounty notice, drag your famously delicate emotions all over the place, and then get one of my fellow Jupitarians, a planet from which I defected, to get in on the act with me? All 'cause I was cross with you? Is that what married folk do?"

A very long pause. Sparks pressed the toe of his boot into the ground. "...I dunno."

"Wow," Red said loftily. Ginny jabbed a finger at her in warning. 

The thing that called itself Carson tried to raise his hands in the universal sign for settle down , but was yanked back by Ginny’s handcuffs. “I’m really me, kid.”

“You are really dead!” Sparks snapped, surprising even himself with how shrill and tense it came out. He’d spent a long time learning to modulate his tone, keep it unflappable. "Whatever you are, and I'm still like 80% sure you're a Jupiter spy, you are not Carson."

Ginny's glare came on so intense she could've started a fire with it. "You think I can’t tell Jupiter spies and humans apart? That’s just as offensive.”

Sparks raised an eyebrow. “Is it, though?” She nodded vigorously. “Red, go get Croach. I want a second opinion.”

Ginny huffed, sitting down hard on the step next to Carson. “Because Martians are so super at sensing us in their midst.”

“He just wants more back up, on account of him feeling all confused and vulnerable,” Red said.

“Alright, you have been told to go get someone, deputy.” Sparks felt unsteady with Ginny’s sudden absence. “Everybody else, inside.”

Chapter Text

 It really was Carson. 

“The energy signals are almost identical. You and the being designated Carson Nevada share the same progenitors,” Croach said, letting go of Carson’s face and taking a step back. “Although it is of note that his appearance is pleasing to seven more of my senses than yours is.”

“Alright, whatever.” Sparks, Ginny, and Red sat on chairs in a semi-circle around Carson. Ginny lowered her gun; Red didn't. Sparks clicked the metal knuckles of his fists together, and looked up at his brother. “...Hi.”

Carson smiled. “Hey kiddo.”

“You better have a good story to tell me.” 

Carson nodded. “That’s fair.” He crossed right leg to balance on his left knee; he almost always sat like that. Strange, the little things that came rushing back. “When I was at the academy, I got caught up with some bad hombres. They used my clearance to smuggle black market stuff on USSA ships, and I got a cut of the profits.”

“Why’d they need your help? Wouldn't any ship do?” Red asked.

“USSA ships never get checked,” Sparks heard himself say, almost on reflex. “The security is the best in the solar system.” Carson always got higher clearance than his station, because he was so bright and trustworthy, because he was a Nevada, because he was the last person anyone would imagine would abuse it.

“Around the time I graduated and they assigned me to the Faraghat, we had a deal go really south. A USSA officer caught wise and the organization arrested half the crime family. The leader accused me of being a double agent and snitching on them.”

“I do not understand how the concept of a deal can travel in any compass direction,” Croach interjected. Everyone ignored him. Carson’s foot started tapping.

“He said we needed to square up. He was going to kill me, and if I told Mom and… if I faced up to the USSA, they would’ve thrown me in space jail and I would’ve been killed anyway. I saw a way out and I took it.”

Tighter, tighter Sparks clenched his robot fists. He was losing the room around him, seeing the slanting floors of the Indomitable, hearing the explosions. “You faked your own death. Found some unlucky bastard’s laser-burned body and switched IDs.”

“He was marked MIA anyway,” Carson said, somewhat defensively. “I’m sorry that I couldn’t tell you or Mom and Dad. It wouldn’t have been safe.”

“And now you’re at my front door, all these years later,” Ginny said. “Why?”

Both of Carson’s feet fell back on the ground with a dull thud. “Because the son of one of them mobsters figured out I’m still kicking, and he has every bounty hunter in the western quadrant coming to end my beautiful life.”

“Something tells me you didn’t just stumble upon the other Nevada here,” Red said.

“Smart one,” he grinned. “You think I haven’t been keeping up with my little brother’s life? Read all about him becoming Marshal here, saving universes and youngins. When I found myself within spitting distance of the fourth planet, it seemed like he'd do a pretty good job saving me."

"You wish for Sparks Nevada to murder the criminals who wish to murder you?" Croach said.

"Kill, throw in one of his little cells, whichever strikes your fancy," Carson said. "I figure being a lawman gives you a lot of options, right, Sparks? Sparks?”

“Sparks Nevada, why are your pupils dilated like you are staring a great distance away?” Croach asked. “And why have you not spoken for forty-five seconds?”

Sparks blinked hard. Back to Mars. He had no sense he’d been spacing out for longer than a moment. 

“You okay, buddy?” Ginny placed her hand on his shoulder. He shrugged her off.

“I’m perfect.” He rose to his full height, tried to keep his voice steady. “Carson Nevada, you are under arrest.”

A chorus of “what?” rose up around him, but Sparks just went for the front door.

He was calling the USSA to come pick up his brother. He could stand trial in protective custody, and he would go back to being something in the back of Sparks brain he didn’t have to think or have feelings about. In his haste, he tripped down the front steps and lurched sideways, grabbing the railing for balance. Boots gently creaked against the porch behind him.

“Ginny, I ain’t looking to be talked out of this.”

“Well, for starters, I ain’t Ginny.” Red drew even with him. She had her hands on her belt, and leaned against the opposite railing like nothing was amiss. A southwardly wind blew her hair loose from her long red braids. “You’re still standin’. You can take pride in that.”

“Yeah, I’m fine. Everything’s fine. Everything is awesome.”

“Nevada, I may have been born at night, but it wasn’t last night.”

“...how do you know when you were born?”

Red stiffened. “I mean, I guess I don’t.”

“You don’t, no.”

“That’s kind of my point.” She turned to face him, her back against the porch. “You know how much of my life I spent waiting for my human family to magically show up, gimme that part of me that's been missing? You got a chance to get your family back, fill that part of you. Carson’s here begging for your help."

"He's here expectin' my help."

"I thought you liked being the hero.”

“He broke the law.”

“That’s not why you’re rushin’ to get your handcuffs.” Red gave him a knowing look that set his teeth on edge. “Look, if we can lure his criminal friends here, you can make four times the arrests. Think of all the paperwork.”

This mollified him, somewhat. He cleared his throat and let go of the bannister.  “Fine.”

They swept back into the house – Red practically stepping on his feet, why did everyone decide he needed close personal standing support today? – and he knelt in front of Carson, undoing his handcuffs.

“You’re gonna stay here, on the couch,” he decided for the room. “Ginny’s gonna wave down these troublemakers of yours, saying she caught you. Then we’re gonna arrest everybody.”

Carson raised an eyebrow. “What does ‘everybody’ entail?”

Sparks cut his gaze away. “We’ll see.”

Ginny would send out a wave in the early morning. Until then, they’d playact normal life in the house. The scene; my brother is staying with me and my wife. 

Fairly average sentence to most people. For Sparks, every part of it was utter batshit. He’d just gotten used to the idea of being married, of being someone’s husband, and now the brother he’d long buried was part of the equation, however briefly. He’d’ve stayed in Earth’s suburbs if he wanted this kind of life. Now he just awkwardly padded around his own house, watching the dark Martian winter come early, the stars poking out of void. Ginny went to their bedroom. Carson stayed in the living room.

“The constellations are different here,” he said, staying out the window with glassy eyes.

“Different planet,” Sparks said. He found himself drawn to the living room like a magnet. Even after all these years, the alien sky still gave him the creeps sometimes too.

“Mmm,” Carson hummed. “You get back to Earth much?”

“Not as much as I’d like. Get busy with work.” He sat down carefully on a stool, like it might collapse underneath him. “What is it exactly that you… do?”

Carson exhaled, a long whoosh. “I dabble in this and that. Move a lot of money, drugs, expensive alcohol–"

“Stolen?”

“Most of it. Don't look at me like that."

"Like what?"

"That pinched, judge-y way you do."

"My face is my face, I cannot control–"

“Sparks?” Ginny stood at the end of the hallway, hair down from it’s hold, cascading down her shoulders. “You oughta get some rest. Big day tomorrow.”

“Uh, yeah.” He reached out and pulled Ginny’s handcuffs from under the couch, and hooked Carson’s left wrist to the windowsill faster than he could react. “Just a precaution. You understand.”

Carson shook his head. “You are… something else, kiddo.”

“Sparks? Sparkles, Mars to Sparkles.” Ginny kicked his leg gently under the covers. He‘d been staring up at the ceiling for about an hour, barely breathing. This sort of mildly alarming behavior evidently kept her from sleep, too. “What’s cooking, good looking?”

“I feel… weird.”

Ginny turned to look at him, propping herself up on her elbow. “Weird in some human bodily way? Or in the feelings way?”

His chest tingled, not out of excitement or lovesickness, or anything else he could really name. Like he was buzzing, tons of stopped up energy released all at once. “Both?”

He turned to face her, running a hand around the curve of her face. The round oval shape she’d been wearing when he met her, the one he was still extremely partial to. He craned his neck up to kiss her. She responded in kind for a moment, lacing her fingers through his hair, tugging just enough to pull an embarrassing mewling noise from the back of his throat.

Then her grip loosened and she pulled back, noses still bumping together.

“Did you really think Carson was a Jupiter Spy today?”

Sparks sighed, wrapped his leg around her’s, and pulled himself closer to her chest. “Oh, we gotta talk about that?”

“That you thought I employed shapeshifters to make a point in a marital dispute? Yeah, I think that deserves a chat.”

He groaned, let his head drop against Ginny’s neck. “Remember when we were about to have sex a minute ago?”

“You still don’t trust me.” He could feel the muscles in her legs tensing up, gearing up for a fight. Instead he just groaned again, refusing to move his head from the crook of her shoulder and spine.

“Alright, let’s do this. I want you to imagine you’re human. A kid, a human kid.”

“Okay,” Ginny said warily. She probably couldn’t hear him very well, muffled against her soft skin.

“You got this brother, he’s great at everything, but not in an obnoxious way. Not like Cactoid Jim. Ugh, you ever actually meet Cactoid Jim? He was the worst, he–”

“Honey.”

“So he’s just, like, so cool. And he’s cool to you too, at a time when ain’t nobody really is, and then out of the clear blue sky he’s gone. Forever. Even though he promis– said that he’d never do that.” Ginny’s hand was gentle on the back of his head, but he pushed her off to sit up, the buzzing feeling and the talking riling him up. “That’ll make you a little gun-shy, you reckon? Figuratively, at least. And then, when you’re grown and past it, he comes back, and he ain't at all what you got led to believe he was, which just makes it really, really… worse.”

He could feel his face heating up, wished he had the foresight to stay hidden in Ginny’s shoulder.

“Huh. Yeah, I can’t imagine that.” Ginny cut a glance towards the living room. If Carson was awake, or listening, he didn’t give any indication. “I’m not saying that didn’t screw you up good and proper.”

“I’m sensing a ‘but’ in the offing.”

“You can’t let the past drag you around on it’s ankle. I am not your brother.”

“Yeah, that’d’ve made this very weird.” Ginny lightly slapped his thigh, admonishing. “What?”

She threw herself onto her back with a heavy sigh. “Just floating the idea that you need to take some personal responsibility for the way you are, Sparky.”

Sparks didn’t reply. He just got out of bed, stuffed on his boots. He slammed out of the house like a thunderclap, out the back door so he didn’t have to face anyone tied up near the front.

If he hadn’t, he may have seen, save for Ginny, the house was empty.

Chapter Text

The saloon was the only building still lit and open in the middle of town, which was fine by Sparks. He’d ridden away from his increasingly screwed up family with no real aims in mind, but getting a drink or four sounded like the perfect plan as soon as it presented itself.

The doors slid open with a distracted greeting. Oh, hey Marshal. If AI had eyes, they would’ve been gazing far away from him, at the other end of the room.

“Sorry, is this a bad time?” He asked, testy. The AI only hummed, the response of the barely listening. A peal of laughter rose up, and Sparks noticed a small crowd gathering at one end of the bar.

Carson. Escaped from his handcuffs, holding court with a space beer in his hand, a half dozen town folk standing around, hanging onto his every word. Even Red, sitting in the corner with a sasparilla and her head on Croach’s shoulder, seemed more amused than ornery.

This couldn’t be good.

He slid against the wall, melting in behind the crowd before Carson saw him. Most townsfolk didn’t give him a second glance when he didn’t have his marshalin’ gear on. In faded pajamas and boots, he seemed like any other unfortunate yokel.

“...there was this time when he was maybe ten, and our parents took us to a peacekeeping dinner with Neptune ambassadors, and they’re –” Carson held his hands out wide on either side of his head. “–y’know, huge, fifteen feet tall, at least half as wide. During desert Sparks has to go to the bathroom, and I guess their facilities are to scale, because he just – bam! – falls plum into the toilet.”

A ripple of laughter. Red actually slapped her knee. Sparks felt his face turning the same color as his hair.

“Okay, that wasn’t even- I-” his words caught in his throat, but Carson already spotted him through the crowd. “Those Neptunians were...not respectful of other cultures so… this is an embarrassing story about them, really.”

“Uh-oh, looks like I’m in trouble,” he grinned when he said it, but the anxious glint in his eyes was enough to keep Sparks from making a real scene. Good. He should be scared of him.

“‘scuse me,” he said, stepping away from the bar, walking to meet Sparks as the crowd dispersed, casting curious glances back at them. Sparks took his elbow and tried to drag him away from prying eyes. Carson was still stronger than him, though, and he only managed to move him a few feet away, slamming up against Red and Croach’s table. “Okay, don’t flip out, I just needed a break.”

“Could you get out of the handcuffs the whole time?” He asked.

Carson shrugged. “I’ve lived an interesting life.”

“He is interesting, Sparks Nevada,” Croach said. “He has many enlightening tales of your time as a below average youngling.”

Carson’s eyes flared and he held up his hands in defense. “Hey there, I did not say that. I just had to tell your nice constitutes a funny story about their marshal."

“More like six funny stories,” Red muttered. Carson didn’t seem to hear her.

“Is ‘constitutes’ the right words? Your town folk. You get it.”

“You can’t just run off,” Sparks said. “You tryin' to get off planet?”

Carson sat down, shoulder-to-shoulder with Red, who was not thrilled with this new body in her personal space. “I’m tryin’ to take a break. Been on the run for the better part of a year, and before that–you got any idea how hard it is to keep yourself from getting photographed for twenty years?”

“Twenty-two years,” Sparks corrected, without even meaning to. His face got hotter then, as Red, Croach, and Carson looked at him with varying levels of concern. He exhaled hard through his nose and sat down next to his brother. A very small, old voice piped up in the back of his head, telling him not to be so weird and uptight. He grabbed Carson’s beer, took a swig, and told it to shut up.

Carson’s eyes softened. “Yeah. Twenty-two years.” He reached over to pat Sparks’ forearm, and he almost stopped himself from flinching. “I ain’t so dim to think you’re not angry about this.”

“I’m fine.” Red scoffed, rolled her eyes. He wished he was sitting next to her, so he could drive his nails into her leg. “It’s fine. ”

Carson shook his head. “It ain’t, but it’s what happened. And you grew up so good!” He grinned that big, dazzling smile. The one made whoever he had it aimed at feel like they’d just done something amazing, that they were the last great hope for the galaxy, and Carson was just so glad to be there to witness it. “You got yourself a life here, got a wife! Y’know, I always thought you were gonna lean towards fellas, when the time came. Like your blue friend here.”

“Gross,” Sparks said.

“He wishes,” Croach said at the same time.

“I think you’d be a cute couple!” Carson raised his hands in surrender, still gently smiling. “Well, Ginny seems real nice.”

Sparks took another long drink from Carson’s glass before answering. “She is.”

“Y’know, aside from the handcuffing.”

“Sure.”

“Dad doesn’t know, does he?”

Sparks shrugged. “I told Mom I got married, twisted it a little like we eloped so she wouldn’t get hurt ‘bout missing it. She probably told Dad.”

“No, not that,” Carson shook his head. “I meant does he know you married a Jupe?”

Sparks grip around the cup tightened too hard and the glass splintered in two. The sharp piece suddenly jutting out from the middle sliced into his palm. He swore and let go. “Croach, napkin.”

“Whoa, butterfingers,” Carson said. Sparks wrapped the strip of cloth Croach produced from out of nowhere around his hand, watching the red soak through.  

“Don’t call her that,” he muttered.

“Oh come on, I’m just saying, Dad would flip out if he knew.”

“Dad’d flip out a mite more if he knew you’ve been breathing all this time.” The pain in Sparks’ hand stung with such intensity it was all he could do not to devolve into swearing. “Alright, we’re done with this. Barkeep, you got anything I could tie someone up with in here?”

The barkeep stops doling out a space cocktail mid-pour. “Uh, that’ll be a negative, on account of tying people up can lead to hostage-type situations and/or sexual-type situations, both of which almost always lead to trouble in my place.”

“Great.”

Red caught Carson’s wrist, pinned it behind his back. “This work, Nevada?”

“For now.” He cracked a humorless smile. “Let’s head back to mine, try not to have ourselves another escape act until your gang comes in tomorrow.”

Carson sighed. “Kiddo, why do you keep treatin’ me like I’m a criminal?”

“You are a criminal.” Sparks’ shoulders hitched up.

“I’m your brother.”

“People can be two things.” Higher and higher, muscles pulling tighter and tighter.

“I can't stand to see you walking around like you’re so much better than me. I taught you to use that laser pistol you got. Hell, I taught you to how to lace up your boots.”

“Yeah, well, if that guy was around, it’d be a different story.”

Carson cocked his head, seeming genuinely confused. “What guy? Who did you think I was?”

He wanted to say, I thought you were the only real hero in the universe. I thought you stood for truth and justice, and that’s the reason I do the same. He wanted to say, I needed you, and you left.

Instead, he punched Carson square in the face.

There was a satisfying little crack as his fist broke the bridge of Carson’s nose. He sprung back in his shock, pulling out of Red’s grip. He wiped the blood of his face, back up against the wall, blue eyes wide.

“What the hell, Sparks?” He didn’t give him a chance to answer, though, and lunged at him; knocking him flat onto his back.

“You take this out of my place!” The Barkeep protested feebly, but the Nevadas were too busy rolling around on the floor, knocking into chairs and table legs.

“We had a funeral! There was an inquest and gossip from everyone this side of Alpha Centauri! And then they tried to turn me into you!” Sparks shouted, driving his knee into Carson’s stomach. “And all I ever did was let them down, ‘cause it’s impossible to compete against the perfect and dead Carson Nevada!”

“They didn’t think I was perfect!” Carson said, trying to rip out a chunk of Sparks’ hair. “Why do you think I started smuggling? I was suffocating being their golden child! They ran me ragged! You’re the one who got to coast!”

“What?”

“You just got to be the baby! Sparks is so sensitive, Sparks is so fragile, Sparks has asthma attacks when we go into hyperdrive, be nice to him! No one ever called me Noodle!”

“You think I liked that?”

A pair of strong, cool arms yanked Sparks out from under his brother. Still kicking and twisting, Croach dragged him halfway across the bar. The barkeep and Red had a hold of Carson, pushing him back to his own corner. Sparks spine ached, and his hand was still bleeding. Carson didn’t look much better.

“If y’all are done acting like little kids, ya might notice the sound of a spaceship landing outside this establishment,” Red said. “Looks like Carson’s friends are here early.”

Chapter Text

The sand outside whipped itself into mini-cyclones as the wind picked up hard. Overhead, a sleek black ship the size of the saloon itself started to descend into the middle of the street.

“Croach, get off of me,” Sparks said, staring up from the front steps.

“I will release you under the condition you are not going to murder your sibling upon me doing so.”

“Sure.”

Croach let go of his wrists and Sparks stepped down onto the street, just as the ship landed. His blood was still rushing in his ears, buzzing in his chest down to his fingers. He felt raw and angry and ready. Let it be killer robots, let it be Science Aliens, let it be the enormous fucking Neptunians; he’d tackle and get his cuffs on them before they could get a boot on the ground.

Instead, four stout, purple beings waddled off the ship, barely coming up to Sparks’ hip. Webby purple nets hung off the sides of their heads, flopping into their eyes; horizontal slits for pupils. Something demonic about that, Sparks reckoned.

He’d had the thought before; sometimes Ginny’s ears has a slight webbing around the edges; sometimes her eyes got a little purple and goatlike.

“Y’all here for Carson Nevada?”

“Uh, yeah guy,” said one of the Jupiterians. “What, you think we just love hanging out with a lot of red dirt?”

“The dirt is many different colors,” Croach said.

“Stop helping.”

“Look, you’re gonna hand over that USSA-loving double crosser if you don’t want your own butt getting all zapped and dead.”

The saloon doors slid open again, Red, the Barkeep, and Carson jockeyed to get forward first. The result looked absurd, everyone dragging the other two people and stumbling over their own feet. Sparks’ remembered the people in his life being a lot more coordinated than this.

“Damnit,” Carson said, by way of greeting. “I knew your lady was gonna call her Jupe friends before tomorrow.”

“Um, rude much?” The Jupiterians said. “Come on, Carsy-doodle. I thought we were friends.”

“You’re fixin’ to kill me, I reckon I can call you whatever I want.”

“Okay,” Sparks’ throat felt like sandpaper all of the sudden. He swallowed, touched his hand to his gun. “Okay, ain’t nobody getting killed."

“Big scary lawman Sparkles here isn’t gonna touch a hair that we sometimes grow on our heads!” said the second alien. "Y'know why?"

“Because we're really sneaky and handsome and good at smuggling?" said the first.

"Because he's morally opposed to police brutality?" said the third.

"Because he loooooves Jupiterians. He loves us so much he married one! We’re from the same superior planet as the lady he gets in bed with!”

“Ugh, you mean Ginny? She’s a traitor!” protested the fourth. "What kind of self respecting Jupiterian spells their name with a G?"

“Traitor or not, she’s family. Ours and yours, Spark-a-doodle-doo. And you don’t shoot family.”

“Well, that don’t seem like an absolute.” A cool, level voice joined the group.

Before anyone could react; four shots zapped through their air, right down the line at the mobsters; one, two, three, four, each one in the chest. They fell over with surprised gulps, like a row of dominos going down.

Ginny strode down the street, stopping at the foot of the steps into the saloon. Still in her nightgown, hair falling in her face. 

“Bagropa!” Red said. “That was dang ruthless.”

Ginny blew on smoking barrel of her gun and holstered it. “Oh, they ain’t dead. Jupiterians have our hearts up here.” She tapped her left shoulder. “They’re just neutralized."

"We're not neutralized!" yelled the first one, "We're resting! And you look stupid with human skin!" 

Ginny ignored this and turned to the folks up on the porch. "Y’all can put down your guns now. Good to know I am in fact the quickest draw here.”

“You did have the element of surprise,” Red grumbled.

“We’re definitely having sex when we get home,” Sparks blurted out.

“Ew!” shrieked one of the wounded mobsters, rolling back and forth on the ground.

“I mean-I meant...you just shot a bunch of your relatives.”

Ginny raked her hand back through her hair, pushing all the loose strands out of her eyes. “Well, they were threatening my husband, something I don’t take kindly to.” She knocked her hip gently against Sparks’. “I got your back. Always.”

Something pulled tight in his chest, but not in a painful way. “Ginny West, you’re my hero.”

She rolled her eyes. “Now, if Croach could help me and you get all of these fellas into the jail while we sort this out and I possibly get paid, that’d be greatly appreciated.”

“What should we do regarding the being designated Carson Nevada?” Croach asked.

Sparks turned, regarded his brother. “Separate cell. I still think I owe the USSA a call.”

Carson wrestled Red’s gun off her belt and pressed it against the side of her temple. Red swore, but Carson got a beefy arm tight around her before she could push him off. Sparks’ stomach plunged.

“I am not a fan of trouble in front of my place, either!” Barkeep protested.

“You’re still the same you always were,” Ginny’s gun was on Carson, but he only had eyes for Sparks. “Need everyone else to fight your battles for you. You really think if you call Mom and Dad–”

“I said call the USSA.”

“–this just stops being your problem? Half that crime family is in space jail, they’ll kill me three days in. Reckon you want that on your conscience?”

Sparks just sighed, leaned back against one of the saloon porch support beams. “Y’know, I spent so much of my life thinking you hung the stars and moon, that I never did notice how manipulative you are.”

“Moons,” Croach corrected.

Carson scoffed, dug the barrel Red’s gun harder against her skin. “Life ain’t always white hats ‘gainst black. People ain’t one thing or another. Wish I’d thought to teach you that. Y’know, that’s on me. You gonna admit you’re similarly flawed and let me go, or am I gonna have to give your pal here a little boo-boo?”

“Don’t let him intimate you, Nevada,” Red said.

“He doesn’t,” Sparks said, still leaning back. “I’m… from Earth.”

Carson laughed. Hard. He threw his head back, stomach shaking. “He still does that?”

“All the time,” Ginny said, at the same time Red nodded and Croach added “Constantly.”

“You know I just told you that whole Earth Pride thing to make you feel better, right?” Carson said. He was slowly sliding backwards on his heels, dragging Red with him; inching towards the edge of the porch, the road, the wide open expanse where he could run. “Being born there doesn't actually gives you some extra set of abilities. It just makes your muscle mass deplete faster than all the kids who used to kick the shit out of you.”

If Sparks lunged at him, punched him in the face again, Carson would just turn the gun off of Red and pop him in the stomach. If he did nothing, Red would get dragged away while Carson made his escape. She seemed to notice this in the same moment he did.

“Nevada, I’m sorry I said you shoulda helped him,” she said, still squirming in Carson's grip. “Didn’t intend for things to get so murder-y and emotional. Is that normal in human families?”

“It’s not not normal,” Barkeep said.

“This ain’t your fault, Red,” Sparks said. “Your heart was in the right place. Both metaphorically and physically,”

“Offensive,” Ginny said.

“Besides, family’s good for some things. Like teaching you to draw faster than just about anyone in the solar system.”

For months after Carson’s funeral, Sparks wouldn’t leave Earth.

His parents left him to his own devices, so wrapped up in their own grief, anger, and legal problems the last thing they wanted was a sulky teenager kicking up a fuss about living on the Indomitable. Sparks wasn’t trying to be petulant, though. He just got more and more sweaty, ornery, and anxious every time he had to get on that ship. The fight came back to him, learning his brother was dead, the feeling some part of him was breaking off, falling into the void of space forever.

So he stayed home. He survived on burnt toast and learned carpentry and practiced shooting. He practiced shooting a lot. He spent hundreds on lazer bullets, went to bed in his family’s empty apartment with his arm aching and eyes stinging, and then got up early to do it again. Mercy used to say, in a way she seemed to think comforting, that he’d gained Carson’s skill on top of his own after he died.

He found himself thinking of that, all in the space of a second, as he outdrew his brother and shot him, one in each shoulder and a third in the kneecap. Carson let go of Red, who promptly tackled him, knocking him flat onto his stomach and straddling his back with both knees.

“Go grab me my handcuffs, Barkeep,” she said. “They’re by the space ladies room.”

Blood started to spread out in little halos from Carson’s body. Breathing heavy, he lifted his head, stared Sparks dead in the eye, and spit.

“God damn, kiddo. That was fast.”

“Barkeep, while you’re in there, y’mind grabbing me your communicator?” Sparks added. “Gotta wave someone down.”

“Why did you shoot him three times?” Croach asked, stepping onto the street to pick up the still incapacitated mobsters. “Only twice was necessary to incapacitate him.”

“Guess it's an Earth Pride thing.” The Barkeep returned, Red’s handcuffs in one hand, his long-distance comm in the other. Sparks reached out to take the comm, but felt very woozy and wobbly. He felt Ginny’s arm around his hip, easing him down to sit on the front steps. 

“Easy there.” She took the comm from the Barkeep and pressed it into Sparks’ hands.

"I sense that you are experiencing an adrenaline crash, Sparks Nevada,” Croach said. Sparks shook his head, stared at the little streams of blood slowly winding their way towards him. Still feeling a little weak in the muscles, he punched in the ten digit signal code.

“USS Indomitable, over,” answered a bright, chirpy voice.

“Yeah, this is Marshal Nevada on Mars,” he sounded breathless, even as he took huge gulps of air. “Request to connect to XO Stacy Kerns-Nevada.”

A pause on the other end of the line. “...Noodle?”

“Mo- Ma’am, why are you answering the comms?"

“Lieutenant Knox had to use the bathroom."

"You have like, twenty-five people under you who could cover for her."

"I’m nothing if not a team player,” Stacy replied.

"Whatever."

“Why are you hailing us? Is something wrong?”

Carson closed his eyes, let his head drop against the porch. 

“Yeah, I… I got someone here you oughta talk to.”

Chapter Text

His mother would not stop calling him.

Her face, drawn and worried, appeared in a glowing holographic square for the fourth time in the past twenty-four hours. He set the comm on his desk, rolled his chair back against the wall. An urge to pull his knees up to his chest bolted through his mind. He fought it down.

“How’s it going?”

“Well, there’s a lot of paperwork,” Stacy said. “I had no idea how many forms needed to be signed in order get someone declared alive, and then charged with about seven different crimes.”

“I could help with some of it, if you want.”

She waved him off with a small smile. “That’d be more of a treat for you than anything else, wouldn’t it?” Sparks shrugged. He couldn’t look right at his mother, so he stared at the empty space to the left of her ear. “So, I hear that wife of yours is a...oh, what’s the PC term for those Jupes again?”

“You can just say Ginny.”

“Is that why you eloped? You thought we wouldn’t approve?” In his peripheral, she blinked her big, wet eyes.

“You don’t approve! Dad calls humans who get together with extraterrestrials "Venusian brains". What does that even mean?”

“I want you to be happy, be it with a woman, man, or terrifying alien spy.” She paused, raised an eyebrow. "...is Ginny a woman or a man?"

“Mom!"

"I'm just curious! So sensitive."  A pause fell. Once again, Carson filled the room with such size and intensity that to say his name might crush them. “Oh Noodle, why don’t you take some time off?”

“Are you or Dad taking time off?”

Stacy paused a moment too long. “You’ve had a shock, and I just worry you’re a little unsteady after all this.”

Carson was right, jeez. “I ain’t fragile. I made an arrest – five arrests, actually – in my pajamas. Imagine what I can do with the proper pants and robot fists on.”

Stacy delicately wiped her eyes with the edge of her hand. “Always putting on a brave face for us. All because your brother…” her face screwed up and she became unable to go on.

“Mom,” Sparks reached out on reflex. Before he could go through the screen, though, a wide hand with nails like military headstones came into view, rubbing Stacy’s shoulder.

“Today is hard enough without you upsetting your mother, boy.” Caiaphas said sternly. His father had never looked more exhausted, tense enough to pass for a statue.

“I’m not–”

“We will call when this is sorted out.”

“Fine.”

“Fine?”

“Fine, sir.” Sparks cut the connection before a full blown fight could break out, and threw himself back hard in the chair, feeling drained and all of sixteen years old.

“Should I be worried that everyone in your family thinks you’re gay?” Ginny walked out of the alcove where they filed evidence, and where she thought it best to hide during a potentially angry and intimate conversation with Caiaphas and Stacy. Sparks shrugged.

“Every other version of me is. Figure I’m some kind of cosmic clerical error.”

Ginny got around to his side of the desk, pulled herself up to sit on the edge, dangling her feet in the space between Sparks legs.

“A cosmic error I’m extremely pleased no one tried to troubleshoot,” she said, looking down at him with soft eyes. “Hello, Mr. Nevada.”

He didn’t even try to smile. “Hello, Mrs. West-Nevada.”

“The USSA holding Carson in isolation?”

“Yeah. Reckon he’ll stay there until his trial, maybe even after, for, y’know, safety.” They’ll kill me three days in. Reckon you want that on your conscience?

“And what’s the diagnostic on your mental state right now? Any bugs we need to weed out?"

Sparks shook his head. He thought he shook his head. The commands his brain sent to his face and body didn’t seem to be going through. Something was happening, though, or Ginny wouldn’t be painting that alarmed look on her face, hopping off the desk and taking his head in her hands.

“Oh, hey there, it’s okay.”

He tried to he knew it was okay, he was always okay, regardless of what Croach or his family told people, but he still couldn’t seem to move. Ginny crawled into his lap, knocked his cowboy hat back from his face so she could kiss his forehead. This sort of activity usually felt better.

“Look at me. Hey. Buddy. Eyes up here.” Her grip tightened around his head, rocking it a little with each word. “You got all of them away from causing trouble on Mars, regardless of your personal feelings. Carson is going to prison because that's where he belongs. You did your job."

“I only did my job on account of that’s how he raised me. Stupid black-and-white morality.”

“What did we say about taking personal responsibility?”

“That I’m great at it?”

“You lived sixteen years with him and twenty-two years with the assumption he was six feet under. Math don’t lie. At some point, you became your own man.” She let her hands drop to clasp each other around the back of his neck. “Take it from someone who knows, being a grown up means turning into the person you want to be, not what anyone else tells you.”

Sparks tried to inhale, but his throat felt constricted. He pounded his chest a few times, coughed before saying, “I’m being totally serious, physically or like… emotionally? Cause the first one seems pretty exclusive to you.”

Ginny gently slapped the nape of his neck. “You made you Sparks Nevada. You get to decide what that means.”

He wanted to kiss her. He wanted to apologize for making her shoot four of her own people. He wanted to sit at her feet and tell her that he trusted her, of course he trusted her, more than anyone, and he'd never let that fact be cast into doubt again.

Instead he just said, in a very, very quiet voice, “I love you.”

“Yeah, you’re not so bad yourself.”

The marshal station doors slid open. Red and Croach came in, dusty and looking almost as tired as his parents had.

“Ooh, we interrupting something, lovebirds?” Red asked, jutting her chin at Ginny still straddling her husband. She slid off to the side, but kept a grip on the back of Sparks neck.

He scrunched his face up and released, hoping to reboot his features into something impassive, or at least normal enough that no one would see what Ginny had, someone crumbling on his inner parts. “Nope, just talking.”

“We rode out to the tribe and back, talked to folks ‘bout being on the lookout for any Jupe...iter mobsters coming down ‘round the edge of the planet to seek revenge.” Red said.

“Doubt it’ll come to that," Sparks said.

“There is a significantly higher chance today than there was one sol ago,” Croach said. “Sparks Nevada, I sense that you are experiencing a great chemical imbalance, do you need to visit a medical professional?

Sparks stood up abruptly, Ginny’s hand falling away. “Nope. You wanna reduce your onus, Croach?”

“Always.”

With the toe of his right boot, Sparks pulled open the bottom drawer of his desk. “I need all this gone. Shoot it into space, toss it in a volcano, whatever.”

Ginny, Red, and Croach all leaned over, staring down at the contents. A hodgepodge of everything Sparks couldn’t find a place for in his barebones office, but couldn’t yet bring himself to throw away. The beat up comms pad from his academy days, Earth dirt sealed up tight in a mason jar (a gift Rebecca brought him back from one of her book tours). His inhaler, the paperwork he’d signed and filed to be reinstated as Marshal after his wedding. Carson’s boots.

As one, they looked back up at him, and he crossed his arms.

Croach spoke first. “Sparks Nevada, you need your inhaler.”

“That’s debatable.”

“You need an inhaler more than any other human I know.”

“Yeah, well, you know like five humans, so… not that impressive.”

“You were getting a little wheezy a few minutes ago, sweetheart,” Ginny agreed.

“Why are you helping him?”

“Forget the breather, why in the Sam Hill you tryin’ to throw out your reinstatement paperwork?” Red said. “Ain’t you the fella who insists on keepin’ hard copies in case of technological meltdown?”

“I’m...evolving.”

She shook her head. “Nevada, you can’t tear up the past like that makes what happened there get torn up too.”

Sparks scoffed, cut his eyes away, but he was only met by Ginny, making the same sweet, pitying face as before. “That is not what this is about, I’m just cleaning. Creating a tidier workplace, I am all about that, that is my new passion.”

Ginny absently stroked his hair. “Sure, buddy.”

“That is an incorrect statement, Sparks Nevada. Look at how dirty you left your security blanket footwear.” Croach lifted Carson’s old boots out of the drawer, turning them upside down and leaning in close to examine them. His gross antenna touched them. Without thinking, Sparks lunged at him and yanked them out of his grip.

“Watch i-” he tried to swallow the rest of the sentence.

“Ha!” Red pointed at him in triumph. “You love your past.”

He glared, but continued to hold the boots against his chest, like a child with a stuffed animal. “I love myself, and my stuff is an extension of me. Y’all reckon we can stop talking about the future and the past for five minutes?”

“Sure,” Red said. “Instead we can talk about why you have a comms pad that’s older than Mars.”

“Ooh, is that a Model 3?” Ginny said, practically leaping over the desk to get a better look. “Let me fiddle with it, I never got to troubleshoot something this old!”

Behind her, Croach yelped, having accidentally sprayed himself in the eyes with Sparks’ inhaler. “I am placing you under small onus for the pain your medication has caused me.”

Sparks slowly leaned down and set Carson’s - his - old boots back in the bottom drawer. If Ginny, Red, or Croach noticed, they didn’t comment. They knew to give him his silence, let him talk if he wanted to talk, space out if he needed to space out. 

So he took a deep breath, sat back down behind his desk, and watched his family – his new family, the one he created for himself, who trusted him, loved him, proved themselves in return, – mock everything else he owned.