Work Text:
They’re on the same transport to Pandora, Moze and the tough-looking chick with the tattoos by the window. It’s not a real window, because no one’s invented a glass strong enough in the six galaxies that can survive a jump through hyperspace, but the woman looks out (at) it with this quiet sense of wonder like she’s never seen stars before. It’s kind of cute, really.
“First time flier?” Moze asks in what she hopes is a charming voice, like Captain Spirk in all those old Space Journey in Space re-runs she used to watch between battles, and not “weirdo that can’t mind her own damn business on the shuttle”.
The woman looks surprised and then laughs softly, so maybe that’s a point in charming. “Uh, yeah, actually. Am I that obvious?” she teases, even though she does look a little embarrassed at being found out. Which is, again, kind of cute, or, if Moze is really being honest with herself, just cute.
“It was the, uh, staring. I guess I don’t notice them anymore, you know? The stars.” Moze shrugs, trying her best to play it cool despite the pitter-patter of her poor heart. “Only seen ‘em about a million times now.”
“The air pollution is horrible where I’m from. You’d be lucky to see five measly stars all year in Partali.” The woman sighs, and then unbuckles her seatbelt, and, oh fuck, she’s headed right this way.
Be cool, Moserah, be cool.
“The name’s Amara,” she says, leaning over the empty seat to offer her hand. It’s broad and scarred like the rest of her, and it feels so strong when Moze slaps her hand into Amara’s palm in a casual handshake that the warmth of it goes all the way into her chest. “I like the view better from here.”
Then she fucking winks.
Moze immediately glances at the window, but all she peeps are the same projected stars everyone else in the transport can see. “You like the—ha—wha—” She’s talking about her, isn’t she?
Moze is still sitting but her knees start to go weak anyway, just over that littlest bit of attention from a pretty gal. Is she crazy or something? Does anyone else experience this? There’s trillions of people out there, and it’s not like she needs any of them, but still, sometimes it’s like she’s so damn alone in these... feelings.
Amara gently presses two fingers under Moze’s chin, clicking her stupidly hanging jaw shut. Her eyes linger on Moze’s dog tags, which are incidentally mere centimeters from her cleavage. “What’s your name, soldier?”
It doesn’t even matter at this point because Moze is on death’s doorstep now. She feels too hot everywhere, there must be a blotchy blush from her cheeks all the way down to her toes. Maybe the transport skimped on the air mix and she’s just been breathing toxic sludge this entire time. Yeaaah, it’s the toxic sludge’s fault.
“Moze, uh, just Moze,” she says at last. It all comes out in a rush.
“Well, Just Moze, it is a pleasure to meet you.” Amara slides into the seat beside her and straps in. The weight of her gaze is almost physical. “I hope you don’t mind keeping me company until we land?”
Moze’s mouth goes dry. “Not at all,” she croaks.
*
Amara is a celebrity on her home planet, so she signs Moze’s helmet before she leaves, then doodles a little tiger head right beside it, which is kind of weird given they’ve been extinct for something like the last three hundred years, but Moze is too into her by now to even comment on it.
She waves good-bye as the transport drops Amara and another passenger off at a worn billboard that simply reads NORTHWEST, with the word SUX! scrawled under it in white.
She does not, however, remember to ask for Amara’s ECHO signal until the rockets are firing again, and Amara is a dark smudge in the sand, getting farther and farther away.
Damnit.
*
Moze spends the next two weeks shooting, stabbing, incinerating, and mech-stomping the shit out of anything that crosses her path. That one’s for Max, she tells herself with every bittersweet kill, and that one’s for Yakov, her fallen squadmates, and this one? This one is all for her and the last ten years she flushed down the toilet thinking she could make a difference.
Her first mistake was thinking there was anything like a good corporation. Vladof put clothes on her back, food on her table, hell, they even helped her transition. They saved her life, and all she had to do was risk it all in neverending war.
Her second mistake was not going AWOL the minute she heard they were sending her on that fucking suicide mission to Darzaran Bay. At least she got Iron Bear out of a crap deal, but the cost was high, it was way too damn high.
She doesn’t really know what she’s doing out here on Pandora, but anything beats crawling back to Vladof, even if scrounging around for H-implants has been a bitch without them.
She sticks ol’ faithful I.B. in sentry mode and then spreads her cot out for the night under the crystal clear Pandoran sky. When the gunfire and carnage die down and she’s left alone with her thoughts, just like tonight, they often drift back to Amara.
Strong, beautiful Amara who probably doesn’t even remember Moze exists now and if she did? Would probably think it’s pretty weird of her to still be fixating on some random-ass encounter weeks later. Maybe Amara was just that nice to every chick she came across, no matter how abnormal they seemed. Had to be part of being a hotshot celeb or something, right?
But when Moze squeezes her eyes shut, she tries to remember the warmth of Amara’s hand on her face as her mind slowly gives into some much needed sleep.
*
If asked whether or not she believed in luck, Moze would say, “What kind of stupid-ass question is that?” If pressed, she’d admit she’s not really the type to believe in miracles or good luck or any of that junk, even though the only way to explain her life would be through a series of said miraculous events. Other recruits washed out, other soldiers died, but not Moze, never her. She just always figured she was too damn stubborn to.
She’s maybe thinking about retracting some of those statements on luck now, though, as she rolls into this hole in the wall bar overlooking the desert and who the hell does she find sitting at the counter?
Amara, her sprawling tattoos almost shining blue in the piss-poor lighting.
Moze is suddenly very, very awkward. This Amara isn’t the Amara she’s been fantasizing about in her head, she’s really here, flesh and blood and not dream stuff, and she looks like the smuggest woman in the universe yet slightly worn down by the sheer amount of ass-kicking she must be doing on Pandora. The dark bruises along her knuckles and fresh cuts on her cheeks are easy to see all the way from over here. Moze kind of loves her for it.
But then Amara looks up, and her eyes light up when they catch sight of Moze. There’s no one else it could be, because she just checked: She’s standing by the front door all by herself like some slack-jawed dumbass.
“Moze! Come here, come here! Let me get you a drink,” calls Amara, waving her over warmly like they’re old war buds.
Moze has to remind herself how to put one boot in front of the other. The crowd here looks rough, really rough, not much different than the bandits Moze has been crushing on the regular now. Maybe they’re even the exact same bandits.
“It’s been ages, hasn’t it?” Amara grins as she passes one of the dusty mugs in front of her over.
“Not exactly,” says Moze casually, and it feels as stupid as lying.
“Now wait a damn second,” says the bartender, slamming his hands down on the bar. “We don’t serve her type here.”
Moze blinks. “What type, people with a full set of teeth?”
Amara snorts into the back of her hand.
“Nah, you little corporate guns for hire,” he explains, spitting on the floor. “You think I ain’t seen your Vladof gear? I ain’t blind, ‘cept in my right eye, which is a long story I don’t feel comfortable sharing right now.”
“Look, I don’t gotta explain myself to you either, so, cheers or whatever.” Moze downs the contents of the mug without asking what’s actually in it, and regrets it one exact second later because it burns like hell all the way down into her guts and makes her do this weird, sputtering cough.
Then someone, a very big someone actually, puts a hand on her shoulder. Amara’s eyes flash hotly, and she pointedly cracks her knuckles as she watches. “You heard the boss,” says the bouncer. “Drinks aren’t for ya.”
“Ugh, you guys can keep that crap,” says Moze, shrugging her shoulder out of the big man’s grasp. “Tastes like radioactive piss.”
“That’s it! No one insults my moonshine! Harold, get this bootlicker outta my bar!” snaps the bartender, jerking a finger at Moze.
Harold grins nastily, and sure enough, he’s missing half his teeth. Called it. “With pleasure, boss.”
Amara stands up so fast she sends her stool skidding across the floor. “That’s the last time you insult my friend. You got a problem with her, you got a problem with my fists.” She lifts her hands like another woman would flash a knife, closing them tight. This time the glow of her tattoos isn’t a trick of the light, she really is glowing.
“Whoa, Amara, did you know that your tattoos do this really weird thing—” Except Moze doesn’t get to finish that sentence, because the bouncer tries to grab Amara and immediately gets thrown through the nearest wall like a ragdoll. Not into, through, hunks of wood splintering off around a massive hole.
Moze can physically hear every bandit in the bar turn their head to face them.
Someone lets out a wild yelp and opens fire, a bullet whizzing by Moze’s ear, and Amara grabs her easily by the back of her jacket and yanks her behind the bar as if she weighs nothing. The bartender goes flying right after his goon.
“Well, shit, didn’t really see our first date going this way,” Moze says stupidly, because the words are just suddenly there in her mouth, completely bypassing her filter.
“Our first date?” repeats Amara, a crooked grin on her face. “Trust me, bashing a few guys’ heads in is a great start.”
“Oh, wow, that wasn’t a shutdown.” Moze yanks her service pistol out of her storage deck and pops up behind the counter, taking down the nearest bandit with a hail of Vladof fire. Accuracy, schmaccuracy. “Very cool, very cool.”
Amara comes up, too, sending what appears to be a giant, electric blue fist across the room. It slams knuckles down into the wooden floor, smashing it to pieces and tossing all the men around it into the air. Moze is going to have to ask about that later, after Amara is done (maybe?) flirting with her.
“Why would I shut you down? We had a great time on the transport. I was sorry to see you go, you know.”
Moze’s heart is currently vibrating in her throat. She clears it awkwardly, a stupid smile spreading across her face, and shoots a dude between the eyes. “I, uh, wow, that’s great.”
“You’re blushing,” Amara points out, nudging Moze with her elbow. A bandit rushes the counter, only to be grabbed by the throat by Amara and tossed out on his ass through a new section of wall.
Moze looks away with a cough, focusing down a new target. “Well, yeah, can you blame me?”
Amara pretends to think about it for a second. “Hmmm, no! I am pretty spectacular!”
“See, that’s, uh, that’s why I like you,” says Moze, grinning.
*
Later, when there are no more pissed off guys shooting a storm of bullets at them, Moze lets Amara into Iron Bear’s cockpit. There’s barely room for one person, so adding Amara is a tight fit, but the other woman just makes herself right at home in Moze’s lap, which is slowly killing her inside. The mech whirs around them, taking clunking steps under Moze’s command.
“You can drive him, if ya want.” Moze tells her, almost shyly.
Amara snorts. “I can barely drive a car let alone a battle mech. Show me how, in explicit detail.”
“Nothing really to it. Give me your hands?” Amara gently places both in Moze’s outstretched palm, and Moze guides her hands to the controls.
“Directional shaft on the right, fuel release on the left. Go ahead and give him some more gas,” she instructs.
Amara presses one of the rods forward, making Iron Bear lurch forward with a creak. “Too fast, sorry!”
“Nah, you’re doing fine. Trust me. I was a total mess during training.” She maybe crashed her training mech once or twice. Or four times. “You can keep going.”
Emboldened, Amara slowly lifts both the rods, sending I.B. into a steady, headlong run forward.
Moze grins. “See, you’re a natural! Uh, watch out for the boulder!”
“Ah!” Amara quickly readjusts the mech’s course, rocking them together in the cockpit. She looks over her shoulder at Moze and grins, and Moze is terribly distracted by the fullness of her lips, only inches away from her own. “Maybe I am a natural.”
And then she accidentally steers them into a different rock.
The crash sends them both sprawling onto Iron Bear’s thermoplastic windows, so her ribs are pretty sore now, but Moze can’t stop laughing. “What were you—ha!—saying?” she wheezes, wiping tears from her eyes.
“Shut up! It’s not funny!” wheezes Amara right back, clutching her side as she giggles. It’s probably the cutest thing Moze has ever seen, matched only by Amara turning and breathlessly pressing her flushed face into Moze’s shoulder.
“It’s a little funny,” says Moze, her voice suddenly quiet. Smiling to herself, she reaches a hand up and brushes a loose lock of hair behind Amara’s ear.
Eyes wide, Amara laughs softly, angling her mouth so that it brushes with dangerous softness over the delicate skin of Moze’s wrist. “Laugh while you can, then.”
Something inside of Moze’s brain short-circuits right then and there. Whatever Amara just said makes no sense, because Moze can no longer understand any human language. Her world just instantly shrunk down to Amara and her incredible mouth. “Uh, what?”
“I said,” and Amara just lowers her lips, kissing Moze’s wrist instead, her eyes and smile bright.
“Yeah, that’s what I thought you said,” Moze begins, her words feeling clumsy yet far too bold in her mouth, “except I couldn’t really hear you.”
“Well, let me speak a little more clearly,” says Amara playfully, taking fistfuls of Moze’s jacket and hauling her close. She kisses Moze deeply, and Moze feels her body melt away in pure bliss. It’s hot and messy and Amara uses too much teeth, and it’s absolutely perfect. Moze hasn't been kissed like that in, whew, longer than she cares to ever admit.
“Mmph, well, I heard you loud and clear,” Moze says weakly, because she’s an idiot and just has to mess up a good thing by talking too much. Her eyes are glued to Amara’s mouth, silently willing her to not stop.
“I think I’ll be the judge of that,” and Amara kisses her again.
*
When Amara is finished with her, Moze feels like one huge bruise. She’s covered in bites, from her jaw down to her tits, and awkwardly shoves the latter back into her bra. Amara is fixing her hair beside her, pulling it back into a tight ponytail, as she reminds Moze of her plans.
“I left out some details when we first spoke,” she explains, looking extremely pleased with herself, “about why I’m really here. You’re probably wondering about the arms. Not these babies.” And wow, Moze will never get tired of seeing those biceps flex. "I mean the, um, strangely floating magical ones."
Moze props herself up on an elbow. “A little bit, yeah. What are they? Scratch that, better question, what are you?”
Amara snorts. “You’ve never heard of a Siren?”
Moze shrugs. “I mean, I figured it was just a story some guys told, you know? Shooting the shit. Women that were like, ten feet tall with eyes made of fire and lightning.”
“I am very much real,” Amara reminds her smugly, eyeing a hickey on Moze’s neck. Moze instinctively reaches up to touch the mark with a shiver. “As is the Vault on Pandora.” Amara shakes her head. “Don’t ask me how I know that last part.”
“Siren business, right?” Moze runs the back of her fingers against Amara’s arm.
“Right. I was drawn to this place, just not for reasons I could explain without seeming off my rocker. I had to find out more, about me, these powers, everything. And I’m still looking.”
“It’s a big planet. You, uh, might need another pair of eyes, you know.”
Amara flashes a grin. “You believe me? You want to help? It’ll be pretty dangerous.”
“Psh.” Moze waves a hand, trying to play it cool. “Dangerous is one of my many middle names.”
“Well, what are we waiting for, huh? Let’s go get us a Vault,” Amara tells her excitedly, and grabs Moze by the hand, squeezing their fingers together.