Archive of Our Own

It was the ring she noticed first.

Later, much later, when they're tangled in bed together in a hotel room that costs more than Al-Ameri's ever had in her life, she'll tell Miriet that it was her smile—lonely and just a little bit sad, but perfectly graceful. She'll tell her that all it took was for their eyes to meet. It's not the only lie she'll tell that night.

The truth, though, is this: she wanted Miriet from the moment she saw her ring. Tiny and delicate, unobtrusive, with a glistening red stone perched on top of the intricately-wrought silver, it shone as she sat on the edge of her stool and lifted her drink to her lips.

The club was called The Golden Comet, in a reference to the planet's most defining feature, and it catered to the tourists who came from systems over to see the nightly spectacle; most of them were astro-mining speculators, young an newly rich, hoping to party their money away before they lost it all in the next bust. To an untrained eye, the woman in the corner—and the ring on her finger—stood out no more than the rest of the flashily-dressed drunks here. A little less, even, with her slate-grey clothes and her single piece of jewelry and her lack of any sort of interesting implants.

Al-Ameri's many things, but unobservant has never in her life been one of them. It took her only a second to hone in on the ring, noticeable precisely for how understated it was, and barely more time to realize exactly what she was staring at. She'd never seen one in person before, but the gleam of it, the threads of barely-visible ultrared gleaming in flecks among the more traditional ruby color, the way it caught every hint of light and reflected it stronger... there was only one thing it could be.

She can still remember the way her stomach flipped over at the realization, fear and disbelief and desperate, aching desire coursing through her all at once.

A sunstar ruby. Not just valuable enough to buy the bar they're standing in, or the land around it—the woman in the corner could purchase the whole fucking planet without blinking an eye. Maybe the solar system, depending on the carat.

Al-Ameri was supposed to be lying low that night. Dodging a warrant that would have meant her arrest and public beheading. But she's never once in her life been the sort to back down from a bet, and the woman in the corner—curled in on herself, staring down at her drink like it was her only friend, a treasure beyond anything she'd ever seen before slipped delicately onto her finger—made for the biggest gamble she'd ever taken on.

So, no. There was no love in it. No matter what she told Miriet that night, or in the weeks and months after—it wasn't genuine interest, wasn't desire, wasn't anything so naive and childish as that.

All that came later. And it's going to be what kills her now.

---

The ring sits heavy on Al-Ameri's finger. It's a plain, laboratory-forged citrocinite, pale blue and speckled; a cheap ring, but beautiful. She told Miriet she didn't want anything more than that.

(Miriet was going to give her the sunstar. She took it off her hand, an offering, for our future together—and in the moment of what once would have been the greatest triumph of her life, Al-Ameri only felt sick.)

She's still not quite sure why she did it. Does she think a cheap ring will excuse her somehow? Wipe away all the lies, the deceit, the carefully-woven backstory she invented piece by ramshackle piece? Does she think this will absolve her?

Mother above, she feels sick. The curve of the planet spins by beneath them: a crescent of placid green seas, lit half by sun. The hopper they're in—a tourist's rental with just enough space for two, its upholstery a clean, polished white and its viewport taking up as much space as structurally possible—is hovering high above the atmosphere, waiting for the signal from the planet's port authorities to take them down to the planet below.

Their destination's growing closer so quickly. She wishes she could freeze time.

She should've left before the wedding. Slipped out the door one morning, left her cash and her trinkets and everything else Miriet had ever bought her on the table, caught the next intra-system hopper and then another and another and another until it would take a miracle to find out which planet she was on.

Not everyone could manage it. But Al-Ameri knows how to disappear.

In the moment it would've hurt Miriet, she's sure. But it would have been kinder, in the long run, to let her think she might've drowned in one of the city canals, or been killed by a local gang, or simply had a fit of solar madness and wandered off forever to gaze enraptured at the suns above. Better that than her knowing the truth.

But every morning she thought about doing it, and then she looked over at Miriet asleep in bed, and thought, Tomorrow.

And then came the wedding, too sudden and too swift for Al-Ameri to tear herself free from Miriet in time—just the two of them, together at a cramped little city clerk's office, Miriet pulling her into a frantic, overjoyed kiss before submitting their new paperwork to the mechanical eye of the secretary installed at the desk.

(Too sudden. Hah. She's still lying to herself, isn't she? She could've run. She didn't want to.)

With new paperwork comes new registrations. And with new registrations comes recalibrations: old warrants re-validating themselves, old debts once again demanding to be paid now that they know where to find the one paying them. The one thing she's always tried to avoid—her past catching up with her.

She could've called the wedding off. Or postponed it endlessly, always coming up with some new crisis to set them back a month at a time. She could've managed it. She's good enough at manipulation.

Maybe she wanted it all to come crashing down. Lies never hurt like this before Miriet.

"All you all right?" Miriet asks her in her soft, steady voice.

With a start, Al-Ameri realizes she's been staring into her ring for far too long. "Yes, I'm fine. I'm sorry, just—got lost in my thoughts, is all."

She glances sidelong at Miriet—for reassurance or to torture herself more, she isn't sure.

Her dress today is the shade of soft bluish-grey that she loves so much, and her nails are painted to match. The morning light through the hopper's window makes her brown skin glow golden.

Miriet gives her a smile. It looks a little brittle around the edges. "You look sad, that's all. You've looked sad for days. You're sure—?"

"I love you," Al-Ameri says, too sudden, too heavy for what's supposed to be a happy moment.

I don't regret any of this, she wants to add, but even that simple little lie curdles in her throat; there's so much of this that she regrets, endless pieces of it, she could bury herself in them all if she wished. It's just that Miriet—loving her, wanting her, meeting her—is no part of those regrets.

"I'm glad to be with you," she finishes instead, trying not to let her voice tremble.

It's a weaker sentiment than what she wants to give. Already, she can feel the distance between them growing. Miriet's been picking up on more and more of her fears now, with Al-Ameri's fears harder and harder for her to tamp down. She doesn't know what they're about, because Al-Ameri has never once in her life let herself be honest to someone about what she fears, so what choice does Miriet have but to assume they're her fault?

In an hour they'll land for their honeymoon.

Al-Ameri runs her hand along the armrest next to her seat. The cool plastic feels more real than any other part of this.

She shouldn't be worrying about this yet. Even with this new information leak, it's not as if her past isn't a fucking nightmare to unravel—it's how she got away with it this long. It'll take years for the first of the warrant-officer to hunt her down, if they even manage to at all; there's more than time enough to weave another lie. And really, isn't that what she does best? Dancing on the tar pit's edge, never more than a step away from disaster, not once losing her footing in a game where a single slip means death—wasn't that what she was born for?

Before Miriet, maybe. Now, the truth hangs heavy on her tongue, desperate to break free.

It's the worst possible time. She'll ruin it all be speaking up now. She'll lose everything she loves by telling the truth.

"Miriet," she bursts out, the words like a hopper-crash in slow motion, "I—"

And maybe her simile is more appropriate than she thought, because that's the exact moment a ship slams headlong into their hopper's shields.

---

The crunch is the first thing she notices, somehow, an overwhelming sound of breaking that shudders through her whole body. Like a bone fracture given space, given weight, allowed to exist in the space around them.

Her body responds before her conscious mind even has a say, almost before the ship's crashed into them at all—she leaps forward, wraps herself tightly around Miriet's body and tucks her in close. It comes just in time; in the next moment, a second, far worse noise echoes around them as the hopper's shields give way.

Fuck, Al-Ameri has just enough time to think, and then there's only pain as the larger ships rams the hopper itself.

This doesn't make sense, it doesn't—her head is bleeding, she can feel the sharp painful heat of it stream down her forehead in a sudden torrent, but Miriet is whole and unhurt beneath her so that doesn't matter—she can't understand why a ship would ram them.

Are these people who've come for her? For her debts?

It can't be, though; it doesn't make any sense. No one could find her this quickly, not with the way bureaucracy moves—and anyway, she owes money, but she's not dangerous. Anyone come to hunt her down will grab her at a bar or break into her hotel room. Risking this kind of damage (fuck, taking on these kinds of fees, paying for a hopper like this isn't cheap) makes no sense for one single hunt like her.

Underneath her, Miriet groans. Her hands come up to clutch at Al-Ameri's shoulders, her fingers digging tightly into the fabric there.

"Alli," she says, low and desperate, the nickname sounding somehow tainted from the fear she speaks it with, "you—"

"It's all right," Al-Ameri interrupts. "We'll be okay, I'll get us out of this, I promise—"

Maybe this doesn't have anything to do with them at all. Maybe war has broken out, this lazy tourist planet against some distant militia, and they're just the first unfortunate casualties. It shouldn't make her feel better; they're dead either way. But mother above, she'd love to believe this isn't her fault.

Miriet shakes her head. "No. Alli, Alli, you need..." Her hand fumbles its way upward from Al-Ameri's shoulder to her face, cupping her cheek and bringing her in closer. "You need to run. I'm so sorry. You need to run."

"Run?" Al-Ameri blinks. Her first thought, stupidly, isn't I would never or We'll fight instead, but—"We're in space. Where would I go?"

Blinking, Miriet frowns. Al-Ameri has a feeling she's more rattled than she's letting on. Before she can try to calm her down, though, there's a thump, and a crunch, and an ominous humming whine that starts up right above their heads.

The cabin lights have already been flashing, sirens have already been wailing, but now they take on a somehow even more ominous tone.

HULL BREACH IMMINENT.

"Fuck," Al-Ameri snaps, fumbling for the knife tucked away at her belt and knowing as she does that it won't help much.

Someone's coming in here for them. And when they break through, they're going to be letting all the oxygen out.

"Breathe deep," Al-Ameri mutters, but there's no need; Miriet's already on it, impressively quickly, sucking down air to try and fill her bloodstream enough to keep her alive a few seconds longer.

Her eyes meet Al-Ameri's. She looks just as miserable, just as ashamed, as Al-Ameri's felt these past few days, weeks, months, years.

"I'm sorry," she mouths to her once more.

Something about that—about the look in her eyes when she says it—freezes Al-Ameri in her place. She knows that look all too well. She's worn it in the mirror every morning recently. It's the face of a liar ashamed to be caught.

A second bone-shaking crunch echoes through the cabin before she can say anything. A piece of the hull above them peels away, followed by another. Al-Ameri sucks in one last breath while she can and looks up towards the growing hole to see—

Space, of course. The stars. There, silhouetted against it all, the shadow of a massive ship, like a darker stain of ink on a sheet of black paper. It's too big for her to even guess at the crew size of. A hundred? Two hundred? Maybe more?

They're not going to survive this. She knew it already, but it hurts to have it confirmed.

She grabs Miriet's hand, just to be able to hold it one last time.

A figure appears in the breach, an oversized hull-grinder in one hand and its battery pack strapped to his back, dressed in the matte black safety-suit common to pirate crews all across known space. The nano-mesh he's using to breathe means his face is fully visible, and he's grinning down at them both, and...

Al-Ameri blinks. His face is familiar.

No, not just familiar. The warm brown of his skin; the loose, wild curls that very nearly cover his pale green eyes; the way his face moves as he smiles—it's a strange, twisted mirror of what Al-Ameri sees every day.

Miriet's face, when Al-Ameri turns to look at her, has gone ashen.

The stranger's eyes glide right past Al-Ameri and fall on Miriet instead as he pulls some small, blinking device from his pocket.

"Hello, Miri," he calls, his voice amplified by his suit and edged with venom. "Been a while, hasn't it? Almost thought you might have forgotten about your family."

His hand moves. The device sails smoothly toward them, blinking quicker and quicker and brighter and brighter.

Al-Ameri grabs Miriet once more, holding onto her tight, as burst of light and concussive force hits her.

A wave of pain. Everything goes black.

---

Al-Ameri comes back to herself slowly, groaning, her stomach turning over on itself and a pounding pain threatening to split her head open.

The first thing she notices is that she can breathe. That's... strange, honestly. When the man—Miriet's family?—had ignored her entirely, she'd honestly expected that would be it for her. He wanted one of them and one of them only, and leaving her to suffocate in an oxygen-less hopper would be the easiest way to take care of her useless carcass.

But she's alive. Breathing. Which means either he wanted her after all, or she's being used as a bargain chip for whatever their kidnapper really does want.

Al-Ameri forces her eyes open slowly, blinking until the mess of shapes and lights and colors resolves itself into a coherent landscape.

She's in a box, eight feet by eight feet, the lighting soft, vaguely blue, and seeming to come from everywhere and nowhere at once, the walls a nondescript white shell that she knows from experience are a hell of a lot tougher than they appear. Standard-issue detention center for a ship cruiser-class or above. It's almost comforting—she's been in enough of these that it almost feels familiar. More familiar than everything else that's happened to her recently, anyway.

One of these walls is really a door. But it doesn't open from the inside, and it doesn't open without the correct biometric key.

"Fuck," Al-Ameri murmurs.

She slides her ring back and forth on her finger, staring at the citrocinite's pale blue. They didn't take her jewelry before they locked her in her. Sloppy. Another sign pointing to the fact that she's nothing more than a bargaining chip.

Mother above, fucking shit, what exactly is going on with all of this? That man's Miriet's brother, or maybe a cousin; even if he hadn't said as much, she would've been able to guess it in an instant from the resemblance between them. Miriet's family, and he's running a cruiser-class ship, and ramming hoppers in protected space, and kidnapping people from around the orbits of pacifist planets without a single care in the world.

Miriet's family, and he's bad fucking news.

The two of them had never talked about the past. Miriet avoided questions of Al-Ameri's family, or background, or history, and in return Al-Ameri never once asked Miriet where all her wealth came from—too afraid to be asked a reciprocal question that she simply couldn't answer.

Looking around the cell she's locked in now, Al-Ameri's starting to think that might have been a mistake. It's the first rule of running a good con: use your mark's vulnerabilities against them, while making sure your own never show. All along she's been worrying, panicking, consumed with guilt... and here was a scam a thousand time more massive than her own, slowly closing shut around her.

Al-Ameri scowls at the blank walls. Her fingers are still on the ring, twisting it back and forth. Thinking.

It doesn't make sense, is all. Al-Ameri knows every sort of con (has run most of them at least once) and this one could be almost perfect. A sunstar ruby for the lure. Miriet herself as the artist, working her target into just the right position. The ship, and Miriet's brother in it, the sting.

She can almost imagine Miriet up on the bridge of the ship with her brother, drinking expensive wine and laughing while while Al-Ameri stews down here, except for the one crucial piece of the con that's missing: what the fuck is their target supposed to be here? Al-Ameri's a wanted woman, to be sure, but she's not egotistical enough to imagine she's this wanted; no cruiser-class ship would ever waste the fuel it'd take to pick her up, let alone violate interplanetary treaties in the process.

The only one who's ever wanted her so much as this is Miriet. Over drinks late at night, in the morning when they woke up tangled in bed together, intertwined in a hotel room or a quiet alley or any of a dozen other places—Miriet always wanted her. Al-Ameri knows what fakery is, and she refuses to believe what she saw there was fake.

And if she's getting played still, if it's finally her chance to find herself in the same role she's left a dozen other marks throughout her life, then she'll go her cold, lonely grave a fool.

"Okay," Al-Ameri murmurs to herself, drawing a quiet breath. Enough moping. If this is real, then Miriet needs her help.

Al-Ameri takes stock of her equipment: a knife tucked into her boot, a manual lock pick threaded through the clip in her hair and a skeleton keychip tucked into her bra—and, of course, her ring. She pulls it off her finger with a determined twist, then goes to work separating the stone from the band.

She chose a cheap ring because she didn't want the sunstar. That part's true. But having citrocinite specifically as her stone... that wasn't quite so innocent a decision. Maybe it makes her a bad person, but some part of Al-Ameri's hindbrain is always calculating the quickest way out of a room, and today that's going to be what saves her. And, hopefully, Miriet with her.

Once the stone's free, she grips it tight between two fingers and starts feeling her way around the corners of the seamless walls with her free hand. Each panel looks and sounds and feels the same at first examination, perfectly uniform and perfectly unbreachable, but Al-Ameri's long since learned better than to take a so-called impenetrable security system at face value. . It only takes her a minute to feel for the invisible seam cutting into the bottom of one panel, to get her nails around it and pry it open—and reveal exactly what she was hoping to see.

A control panel.

There's probably cameras watching her every move right now. Al-Ameri can't even begin to guess where any of them might be, so the rude gesture she makes gets directed to the room as a whole.

Fuck yes. Mother above, finally a stroke of good luck.

Shipboard security systems aren't actually so insecure as the heist movies make them sound. Not just anything can cause a meltdown; if anyone so much as touches a control panel without the right kind of protective wear, the whole system starts up a siren and locks the cell doors down immediately. (And fries the person doing the touching, sometimes, depending on just how vindictive the people designing the system happened to be feeling. Casino ships are infamous for it—Al-Ameri's heard all sorts of rumors, some of them maybe even true, about how much time the average casino ship employee spends scraping out the ash left over from apprehended card counters and cheats who thought they'd found themselves an easy escape.)

If she'd ever been asked, she would've denied knowing. Citrocinite's pretty, after all, pale blue and speckled and charming, a lovely stone for how inexpensive it is. Why wouldn't a sweet, honest woman like her want to have it on her finger? But there is something special about it, little-known except by ship engineers who pass it around as casual trivia while on leave at some back water planet—and the pretty women hanging onto their every word, smiling and laughing and filing the information away for later. Citrocinite's an absolute nightmare of a substance around live wires.

Al-Ameri learned a lot of information that way. Not all of it useful, not all of it things she even wanted to know, but this... this is one of the useful things bits.

There's just enough time for one last quiet, desperate prayer, to no god in particular: please, let me survive this. Long enough to see her again, at least. Then, with her mantra done, she takes a deep breath, kisses the citrocinite stone, and tosses it into the heart of the control panel laid bare before her.

She doesn't have a clue how violent this reaction is going to be, whether or not she's going to need to duck. As it turns out, she's got no to worry about it either way, because she doesn't have time to duck.

There's a loud angry pop!, a flash of sparks so bright it throws wild shapes across her vision, a crackle and a hiss of harsh, choking grey smoke that has her throwing her hands up across her face and squeezing her eyes shut tight—and then, in the next moment, silence.

Not just in her cell. Not just from the control panel. The slow, steady hum of the cell, up until now omnipresent and nearly unnoticeable, cuts out until the only thing around her is pure unbroken silence.

It's a heavy thing, the lack of noise almost a sound in and of itself. Even the air feels stiller—like having a blanket over her, muffling everything, or like being locked inside a coffin. She likes one of those similes much less than the other.

Al-Ameri opens her eyes with a mix of hope and dread.

The soft, strange blue lighting is gone, replaced by a harsh fluorescent emergency glow. Al-Ameri stares down into the control panel, now black and smoking, and gives thanks to the charred flecks of blue she can see here and there among the twisted circuitry. She knew she'd be losing the ring, using it like that. But that's all she has of Miriet right now, and if she can't find her...

No, Al-Ameri thinks. She's going to find her and apologize for ruining her wedding gift. It's going to be all right. There's no room in her head to so much as imagine any other outcome. Not when she needs to be thinking about her next steps.

The panels don't look any different with the power out, but Al-Ameri takes a few steps back and slams her shoulder against them anyway. The first doesn't budge. The second doesn't budge, and gives her a nice bruise to remember it by as a bonus. The third, though—the third is what she's looking for. When her shoulder hits the thick, heavy pseudo-metallic material, Al-Ameri can feel through her whole body how it slowly slides back. Not by much, not more than a few centimeters, but it's more than enough. It's exactly what she was looking for.

There must be a backup generator running somewhere, now that Al-Ameri's blown out the power to this section of the ship, but even on a cruiser this size that generator can't possibly be powerful enough to run more than basic lighting and diagnostics and life support. The less important things—like, say, the magnetization keeping the cell's door panel shut—is far too-energy consuming to keep operative in a time like this.

Another shoulder slam gets her another few centimeters. Another, and another, and then finally with a aching sort of drawn-out creak, the bit of paneling gives way and lets her push it all the way back.

Al-Ameri steps out into the hall and into silent empty chaos.

The hall outside the cell isn't much fancier than the inside of her cell was; it's all bland, metallic walls and floors and ceilings that are more scaffolding than actual solid planes, the sort of space set up more for quick movement of people than looking even halfway appealing. The lights overhead are flashing in an emergency pattern, chaotic enough to make Al-Ameri's head ache just from standing where she is. There's no audio alarm sounding—another thing that's too energy-consuming to be worth the emergency generator's efforts—and, far more strangely, there's no one present in the halls either.

She'd expected legions of jackbooted, plastisuited lackeys just waiting to grab her and drag her back into another cell or toss her into the void of space the moment she showed her face outside the cell. Is this cruiser running a skeleton crew? Or is everyone occupied elsewhere?

Ominous. It's the only reason she's free right now, but that doesn't mean Al-Ameri has to like it. Still, she's not enough of a fool to ignore that advantage she's just been given. A quick glance all around, trying to gauge her position, and then she takes off running down the hall.

Al-Ameri has no idea where she's headed. If she were an evil, hopper-ramming, woman-kidnapping, long-lost secret family member, where would she hide her hostage?

Up is the obvious answer. Somewhere more open, somewhere more grandiose. But knowing that doesn't mean Al-Ameri has a single clue how to get there. The bare metallic walls all look the same. The strobing lights make just trying to keep track of where she is a nightmare. And the panic building in her chest, tight and painful, drives her on long past what's sensible.

Find her, a voice in her head is chanting, bring her back, and Al-Ameri runs and runs and runs, rational thought long since fled her body, taking identical-feeling turns around identical-looking corners until she has no hope of even finding her way back to the cell she broke out of, until she's beginning to feel somewhere down in the animal part of her brain that she's going to be stuck in this labyrinth until she collapses, that she's going to starve and die down here, alone, and never find her way back to Miriet—

She turns a corner, and slams into someone so hard she knocks them both to the ground.

"Fuck!" she yelps as she slams straight into unyielding metal.

Mother, that hurt. She scrambles to her feet as fast as she can, knees aching and nose feeling hot and swollen. IT doesn't seem broken, when she puts a hand to it, but there's blood dripping from her nostrils. She wipes it on her sleeve as best she can, already mentally apologizing to Miriet for the waste of nice clothes.

Behind her, the person she knocked over groans. For a moment, hope flares in Al-Ameri's chest—please let it be her—but when she turns the hope fades to fear.

The person on the ground is a stranger: pale skin, a shock of bright red hair shaved on one side to reveal a glittering web of bionic implants, boldly artificial eyes marked by black sclera and pale silver irises, and a symbol Al-Ameri doesn't recognize tattooed in thick black ink across one shoulder.

Al-Ameri blinks down at them. They blink up at her.

With barely a moment's thought, Al-Ameri yanks the lock pick out of her own hair, drops down beside the stranger, and wraps her arms around them to press it to their neck.

"Tell me where you're keeping her," she snarls, trying to keep her voice from shaking.

She doesn't do confrontation. Trickery's the name of her game, and if that ever fails then it's flight over fight for her. Already she feels like the lock pick might slip from her sweaty hands.

Not that it would make much of a difference if it did, of course—she's got about as much chance of harming anyone with it as she does sprouting wings and flying out of here. But it's the only bluff she's got, and she'd hate to lose it.

Her prisoner glances sideways out of the corners of their glossy black eyes at her, then does a double-take.

"You," they say urgently, half-whispering, "you're the woman who came in with the boss, right?"

"The boss?" It takes Al-Ameri a moment to realize. Her scowl grows more vicious when she does. "You mean that man. Miriet's family."

"No!" The denial echoes around the metallic halls, sounding even louder than it is in the eerie, chaotic silence of the flashing lights. They both wince. At a lower volume, the stranger continues, "Well, yes, technically, but—how much do you know, anyway? Who are you?"

Is a lie the better option here? Or the truth? She only has a moment to decide. In the end, it's practicality that wins out more than anything else. She doesn't have the time or the necessary information to come up with a decent cover story.

"I'm Miriet's wife," she admits, "and I know absolutely fucking nothing about anything that's happening here, so why don't you try to explain?"

"Sawglory," the stranger swears—an old asteroid miner's curse, the con artist part of Al-Ameri's brain files that bit of information away just in case this stranger's background ever becomes useful—and then they glance at Al-Ameri once more, like they can't believe she's really there behind them. "You're really..?"

"I'd show you my ring, but I exploded it getting myself out of here, so." Al-Ameri smiles humorlessly.

"You're serious, aren't you?" The stranger swallows. The confusion in their expression changes, gives way to an emotion Al-Ameri can't quite read. "I can't believe... please, you have to let me help you."

"Help me? Am I supposed to believe that? You kidnapped my wife!"

"No, I didn't—"

They twist in Al-Ameri's hold, ignoring the lock pick pressed to their neck and the way Al-Ameri cries out.

"Hey!" she snaps. "Keep still unless you want a few extra holes in your neck."

"...From a lock pick?" they ask, a little hesitantly.

Al-Ameri looks down at the pick, then at the stranger's earnestly confused face. Sighs. Is this how far she's fallen? She hasn't been out of the trickery game that long, but it seems Miriet—the threat of losing her or the woman herself—has made her far too honest.

"You were supposed to think it was a knife," she admits, more than a bit petulantly, as she pulls it away and slips it back into her hair.

Another thing Miriet's given her: a tragic addiction to wanting to see the better in people. Some intuition of hers is telling her to trust this stranger she met down in the belly of the cruiser's prison, and maybe that's going to get her killed but at least she'll die doing something more proactive than running in circles.

"Oh. Sorry. No." The stranger looks at her almost pityingly as the carefully ease a few inches away from her. They're close enough she could grab them still, but far enough that the two of them aren't basically pressed body to body. It's acceptable. "It was a good try? It would've been very convincing if it were just a bit, uh, sharper—"

"Less patronizing, more explaining."

"Right. Sorry." They take a breath. "Look, I may be part of Rosperre's crew now, but I'm not disloyal, you know?" They press a hand to the tattoo on their shoulder. "I don't forget so easily. Not like some people."

"Rosperre?" Al-Ameri asks.

The stranger's eyes widen. "Salt," they murmur emphatically, "you really don't know a bit of it, do you?"

Al-Ameri grits her teeth. "Let's say I don't, then go from there."

She spent so long worrying, wondering, caught up in fear of her own past and how she could possibly explain... she doesn't like the idea that Miriet's been hiding just as much from her in return. Maybe more. It should make her feel good, she supposes, or at least less guilty, but it hardly seems fair. At least one of them should have some straightforward happiness in their life. And if Miriet really was suffering so long, stuck with memories she never shared with Al-Ameri, where does that leave their relationship?

She was supposed to be the awful one. The person hiding things, the one with skeletons shoved haphazardly into a closet too small to contain them all. They weren't both supposed to be liars.

(And lurking beneath it all, a fear she's unwilling to even give thought to for fear of making it real: has she been the one getting played all this time? Did Miriet ever love her at all?)

"Well," says the stranger, "it's like this, see—Miriet, and Rosperre, and the rest of them, all the kids, they were heirs to it all." At Al-Ameri's obvious confusion, they add, in a tone of voice like they're talking to a particularly dim child, "The Solstice Carvers?"

Al-Ameri almost laughs. It isn't funny. It's the least funny thing she's ever heard in her life. But what else can she do, when someone says something like that?

"Yeah," she says instead, sounding almost as numb as she feels. "Yeah, I've heard of them."

The Solstice Carvers. Of course she's heard of them—smugglers with their fangs in every corner of known space, as cold and as vicious as they come, the boogeyman under the bed of every petty thief or small-time crook or two-bit con artist with everything to lose.

They're cruel. Merciless. Everything Miriet isn't.

The stranger nods. "Well, their dad was the last of the original Carvers, and when he passed he wanted it all split between his kids. I worked for Miriet, back then, part of her original crew"—another lingering touch to the tattoo on their shoulder as their voice fills with pride—"and she came to us all after that, real secretive. Said she wanted to go clean. Turn her part of it all into a real business. Trading and buying and selling and all that, you know? Not smuggling anymore." They scowl, closing closer in on themselves. "We were happy. All of us. It meant safer work, more opportunities... would've been great for the crew. But then, right after—she just disappeared."

"So, what, you just joined up with her brother? You didn't think there was anything suspicious about that?"

"I thought she was dead!" the stranger bursts out with, scowling at Al-Ameri. "Of course I didn't want to just move on, but—you can't just leave. It isn't... you won't make it far on your own, once you've pledged. Miriet was kinder, but the rest don't take kindly to deserters. Rosperre showed up and said he could make sure we were taken care of."

"And it was suspicious, of course," Al-Ameri finishes, finally beginning to understand, "but what else could you do?"

The stranger nods sadly. "I didn't want to abandon her. I just—"

They cut themself off, but Al-Ameri can feel the end of the sentence that they're refusing to say. I was afraid. I was looking out for myself. I didn't want to put my own neck on the line.

"It is what it is," they say finally, in a small voice. "But—I don't think Rosperre has anything good in mind for her now. I don't want her to die like that. It's just that there isn't anything I can do."

For all they might feel loyalty to Miriet, in they end they're protecting themself first. She'd like to judge them for it—but if there's one thing she knows, it's hiding. Running away, saving her own skin, not caring for anyone else.

She could run now. There must be a way off this ship. She could get this person to tell her, she's sure—they don't seem like someone who would be difficult to manipulate.

But Miriet is here. Somewhere on this ship, alive. The person who would have fled is the person Al-Ameri was before she met her; that woman doesn't exist anymore.

Al-Ameri takes a deep, steadying breath. "Look," she tells the stranger. "I get it. I don't blame you. I want to help her too. And for that, I need your help. Can you get me to her?"

---

The stranger leads her through the winding maze of the ship's underbelly with an easy confidence Al-Ameri can't help but envy. Finally, after what feels like five hours and has to be at least five minutes, they stop in front of a large, gunmetal-grey door. It's unmarked, but even from the design of it alone, Al-Ameri can tell what it is. Near-instant transportation, to anywhere in the ship.

The stranger stops her in front of it and says, nervously, "So, uh... this'll take you up to the central admin center. They won't expect you, so long as you go fast. I've got the codes on me. But, uh—"

They fidget uncomfortably for a moment. Al-Ameri sighs.

"You need me to knock you out?"

The relief that hits them then is obvious. "Yes! Sorry, thank you. I'd like to support you up there, of course, but... well."

But Al-Ameri's one person up against an army, and if—when—she fails miserably, anyone who took her side is going to enjoy a long, slow death courtesy of the ship's current captain.

They point to a spot on the shaved side of their skull, right between two particularly expensive looking clusters of augmentations. "If you aim right here, come in at a forty-seven degree angle with a force of two-three-seven altrons—"

Al-Ameri raises an eyebrow. "I'm a fullbio. I can't do calculations on the fly like that."

"Oh. Huh. Right." The look they give her is almost pitying—like she's some poor soul stuck wearing last season's brands. "Hmm. Have you ever smashed a weeping melon before?"

"Sure. Dozens of times." It's been years since she had one, but the can almost taste the juice on her tongue just at the mention of them.

"Okay." They touch their breast pocket. "The code chip is here. Plug it in and you'll be good to go. Aim like you're smashing one, then, and once I'm out you can take it out."

"...And if I don't do it right?"

"I've got biotics. If I don't immediately die, I'll be fine." They shrug. "If I do... I mean, it won't hurt? If that makes you feel better."

Huh. Maybe Al-Ameri's been giving them too little credit after all.

She braces herself, trying to call up the memories of summer nights as a child and breaking melon rinds open in her front lawn. "Any, ah..?"

Last words, she doesn't say, but this time it's the stranger's turn to read between the lines. They grin.

"If you succeed, and you get us all out of this—tell Miriet that Son En Met helped you." They cough. "And, er, if Rosperre gets you, tell him it was Karvvakhan who helped you, all right?"

Al Ameri laughs. "Bad coworker?"

"The fucking worst."

After that, there's not much left to say. The stranger—Son En Met, hardly a stranger anymore—closes their voidlike eyes. Al-Ameri breathes in, steadies her trembling hand, and strikes out with four fingers to smack her knuckles against the spot on Son En Met's skull.

They crumple like—well, like a dead body: strings cut, lights out, falling to the floor a loose pile of metal and meat. Al-Ameri's breath catches in her throat. It doesn't look like someone falling unconscious. It looks like a body hitting the ground. For a moment, all she can think is, Mother above, I've just killed somebody.

When she drops to the floor and presses her hand to Son En Met's neck, their breathing is steady and their pulse is strong. Al-Ameri nearly collapses herself out of sheer relief, but there's no time for that; she turns them over onto their side, slips the keychip out of their pocket, and presses it against the keypad next to the cycler's door.

The screen lights up with a pre-programmed destination. The doors slide open, revealing a small, cramped-looking capsule. Al-Ameri takes a moment to think of all the ways this could go wrong, as outnumbered and underprepared and (quite frankly) underskilled for this as she is, and then she shakes her head and steps inside the capsule.

The time to regret this was years ago, in a small bar on a backwater planet whose only claim to fame was its meteor showers, on the night when she saw a woman sitting sad and alone and thought, I could use her.

She was lucky to meet Miriet. Lucky to live with her, lucky to know her as well as she did—even if that wasn't as well as she thought. Now, she'll either be lucky enough to see her again, or lucky enough to die trying.

It's strange. She feels more at peace than she has in months. One way or another, the lies are going to end soon.

Al-Ameri steps into the capsule and lets the doors close behind her.

---

The pressure inside the tubes of a cycler is incredible; it's like an elevator, except using air pressure instead of gravity and a thousand times more nightmarish for it. It takes Al-Ameri barely half a second to reach whatever destination this thing has decided to bring her to, and half a second is more than enough to feel queasy.

She groans quietly as the doors open. The nausea, at least, is a distraction from the growing sense of impending doom.

The room the cycler dumped her out into is massive, circular and opulent. The walls and ceiling are transparent, and for a moment all Al-Ameri can do is gape at it all: the sheer massive size of it all, space stretching out in every direction around her.

As she's taking it in, though, she catches sight of something—someone—else, and in one split second the stars hardly seem to matter anymore.

She's sitting in a pale, off-white couch, staring out at the stars. Her back is to Al-Ameri, not that it matters—she knows that hair, that skin, that delicate-but-cold posture. She'd recognize the figure anywhere, from any distance away.

"Miriet," she breathes, too quietly to be heard, and takes a shaking step further.

Miriet doesn't turn to look, but Al-Ameri can tell from the way she shakes her head that she knows she isn't alone in the room.

"Back so soon?" Her voice drips with venom stronger than any Al-Ameri's ever heard out of her mouth before.

Al-Ameri doesn't answer. She can't. Her tongue is glued to the roof of her mouth suddenly, thick and clumsy and useless. Like slapping a worm against her teeth and trying to make coherent sound from it.

"I thought it would take you longer," Miriet continues, acidic. "Or are you too stupid to understand my terms?" Steel enters her words then, to join the venom. "I'm not speaking to you until I know she's alive. And I'm not taking photographic so-called proof."

"I," Al-Ameri manages, still feeling about as coordinated as a day-old bird, and then, in a small voice, "Miri?"

Miriet turns. Her hand goes to her mouth. The two of them stare at each other for a moment—each of them stock-still and silent, neither of them so much as blinking—and then Miriet makes a desperate noise and throws herself from her seat, and she's rushing towards Al-Ameri and throwing her arms around her, and she's here and she's solid and she's alive and she's weeping into the side of Al-Ameri's neck, holding her tight like she's never held her before—

"You're alive," she says, over and over again, the words like a mantra, "You're alive you're alive you're alive you're alive..."

"Miri," Al-Ameri tries again, still clutching onto her and afraid to let go. "I'm here. I'm okay." She pulls back a bit, trying to get a look at Miriet's face and finding it puffy and wet with tears. "Please. I'm sorry, but—what's going on?"

"He told me you were dead," Miriet murmurs. "When I woke up, he told me he'd left you on the hopper. I thought..."

"I'm here," Al-Ameri tells her again. It seems more important than anything else she could say right now.

Miriet shakes her head. She's staring at Al-Ameri like she "He didn't—how are you here?"

"He didn't leave me. He took me onboard, into a cell. But I got out, I..." She pauses a moment, remembering all over again the loss of her ring, and holds up her bare fingers. "I'm sorry. The citrocinite, I had to use it. It melted."

"Don't apologize. Don't ever apologize. I'm just glad you're alive. He doesn't know you made it out?"

Al-Ameri shakes her head. There's more she wants to say, and more she wants to ask right alongside it, but survival always comes first. "Not unless he has the cycler monitored, and that would be—"

"Paranoid?"

A voice cuts in behind Al-Ameri. Miriet flinches. Al-Ameri flinches with her, and then lets go of her wife to turn and face their new guest.

Rosperre stands in a corner of the massive room, a sturdy-looking door sliding shut at his back. He stares them both down, a grin on his face like he's never seen anything better than the two of them.

He's a beautiful man. Even now, as Al-Ameri's heart sinks into her stomach, that's the first thought that crosses her mind. There's something eerie about him though, a kind of too-perfect plasticity that's the farthest thing in known space from Miriet's quiet charm. His smile is charming and warm and mean, a twisted mirror image of his sister's face.

He pushes a lock of curly hair out of his eyes and continues, "Is that what you were going to say? Or brilliant? Because, frankly, I'm feeling absolutely wonderful about my choices right now."

Fuck. Of course he's a gloater. Al-Ameri's never in her life wanted to strangle a man as much as she wants to strangle him now, and she's wanted to strangle a lot of men.

"Rosperre," Miriet says flatly. She gives her brother a cool glance. "Strange, isn't it? I think you were mistaken about what happened to my wife. I don't remember you being so absentminded."

The look he gives her is sheepish, teasing, a boyish what-can-I-say? sort of grin tugging at the corners of his mouth. "Well, I was hoping to give you a nice surprise, you know? Something to cheer you up once the two of us got our issues all sorted out. But you're stubborn, and she"—he jabs a finger Al-Ameri's way—"is a pain in the ass, so I guess you're getting your present early."

Miriet's cool stare drops another few degrees. "How generous of you."

"I was hoping you'd think so. It's so nice to have you back on board. I've missed you, sis, you know that?" He laughs. "I mean it! I really do. The family was boring without you."

"You liked having me around so much that you threatened to kill my whole fleet if I stayed, is that it?"

"Oh," Al-Ameri murmurs, not quite able to keep silent.

So that's what happened. Al-Ameri used to wonder, occasionally, what exactly had driven Miriet to that little bar in the middle of nowhere the night Al-Ameri met her. Apparently, the answer is threats of murder. Lots and lots of murder.

Al-Ameri doesn't know exactly how big a ship's fleet is, but it's a bigger number than Al-Ameri would be comfortable condemning to death. For Miriet—Miriet who has never once turned down the opportunity to be kind, Miriet who was apparently so close with her ship's crew that even a rank-and-file type like Son En Met speaks worshipfully of her years and years later—the equation had to be even simpler math for her.

Rosperre's expression goes from friendly to scornful in the blink of an eye, like flipping a switch.

"Well, what was I supposed to do, hm? You think I could've just let you run off, play with taxes and tariffs while you ship frozen vegetables and cheap electronics between neighboring systems for the rest of your life?" He scoffs, eyeing Miriet with a scowl. "It's your own fault you took me so seriously to begin with, anyway. I never meant for you to leave. I meant for you to reconsider. Come back to us like you were meant to, stop moping about everything so much, and be the person I knew again."

"And all I have to do is stop caring about the lives we ruin."

"Oh, like you ever really cared that much. I know you better than anyone. You just like being a martyr, don't you? You always have to be the one who's upset about something, because otherwise we don't pay enough attention to you."

Al-Ameri digs her fingers into her palms, letting the pain keep her from doing something suicidal. She wants to smack him across the face, tell him to shut up about things he doesn't know. Miriet's gone stiff and still, staring at him with a frozen sort of expression, and Al-Ameri can't do a single thing about the venom her brother is spitting her way.

Rosperre laughs at the two of them, and Miriet's cold expression. "No response, huh? It's fine, I know I'm right. But that doesn't change that I love you, you know? The family's not the same without you here. I've been looking for you for ages, I thought maybe you really had died until you showed back up again."

Showed back up again?

Al-Ameri wonders a moment, then winces when she realizes. Well, fuck. Maybe she should have tried harder to talk Miriet out of a wedding after all; the announcement has to be what led him to them.

She almost wants to laugh. All this time she was worried about her past, and it turns out she should've been worried about someone else's' entirely.

Miriet's eyes narrow. "Of course. You sound so sincere"—her voice drips with sarcasm to match her brother's—"and yet, I have to wonder. You got my crew when I... left. You must've missed me terribly, if you're willing to give up my fleet and my people to me just to have me back."

"Ah, well." Rosperre gives a cheery shrug. "I mean, there's no call to give your ships back right away, is there? Not when you haven't proved I can trust you yet. And sure, there might be a few things in particular I need your help for—but you don't need to worry about that, all right? It's simple enough: stop running away from your family, come back to where you belong." He gives Al-Ameri a sly, triumphant sort of look. "And I'll even let your wife stay here, too. I'm being generous."

Miriet makes a wounded sound deep in her throat and clutches at Al-Ameri even tighter. The look she gives her is resigned, deeply ashamed.

"Alli," she says quietly, "I'm... I'm so sorry. For everything."

So that's what his plan is, what the future holds for Miriet. A prisoner on her own ship, a figurehead for her brother's power grab, helpless and trapped and forced to suffer in a life she tried to leave behind—and Al-Ameri is meant to be the bait that'll keep her in this grotesque, gilded cage.

No. She isn't going to let that happen. Of course she won't. But she doesn't know how to stop any of this, except—

Al-Ameri stops. Forces herself to breathe. To think. And the more she thinks, the more she thinks about the look Rosperre gave her just now, proud and self-assured and cruel.

It hits her in a wave of certainty, all at once: he doesn't know who she is, any more than Miriet does. He thinks she's just another civilian. Some sweet, innocent person who's horrified by all this, desperate for an out and unused to dealing with the manipulations of people more powerful than her.

He isn't expecting her to lie. And he certainly isn't expecting her to tell a truth he doesn't even realize he's ignorant of.

Al-Ameri untangled herself from Miriet, slowly, savoring every touch before she finally pulls away. She stands to her full height—leaving her still a full head and a half shorter than Rosperre, because some people have all the luck—and takes one last look at Miriet before turning to smile at him.

She doesn't know how this will go. Whether Miriet will ever trust her again, whether either of them will even survive this.

But there's one thing she's sure of; she isn't going to let herself be the pawn used to trap Miriet in this life. One way or another, she's going to free her right now.

"Rosperre," she says. She laughs. "Actually, should I call you brother-in-law? I don't want to make you feel like I'm not excited to be part of the family."

Rosperre raises an eyebrow. "Well! The mouse speaks. And aren't you full of personality."

The mouse. Hah. It's like he's trying to give her motivation to fuck him over. As if he needed to pile on any more.

"Personality's not the only thing I've got." She stares him down, unflinching, until the lazy confidence in his eyes turns to confusion. She loves that realization, always has; there's nothing quite so beautiful as the moment when someone finally figures out they've been underestimating her. "Did you ever dig into me at all when you were looking for your sister, by any chance?"

"Alli," Miriet murmurs.

She reaches out for Al-Ameri's hand, trying to put herself between Al-Ameri and Rosperre once more, and Al-Ameri loves her so much for it that for a moment she thinks her heart might break. She slips out of her grasp, though, and gives her a smile that she hopes is reassuring.

Trust me, she wants to say, but—well, Miriet always has, hasn't she? Now she just has to hope she won't shatter that all in an instant.

Still looking less than impressed, Rosperre says, "Can't say I did, no. You'll have to forgive me for not knowing all about your family and your pets and your time at university. You can tell me later, if you like, we'll have time enough for that. I'm sure it's all fascinating."

Al-Ameri takes a step closer to him, then other, crossing the ornate room until they're standing at barely more than arms' length. The stars hang heavy above her, framed by the transparent ceiling. They make her feel small. Somehow, that's kind of comforting.

"I do think it's pretty fascinating," she says. She smiles at him, aiming for carefree and knowing all the while that she's missing the mark. That's what she needs to be right now: desperate. Afraid. Pushed past her limits, and discovering a point beyond them where she just doesn't care anymore. "Did you know, about a decade ago I used to go by Lek? For a good year and a half, even, but I had to ditch the name when I ditched the planet because there was a warrant out for my arrest." Now it's her turn to give him a knowing look. "Turns out people don't like it when you sell them forged war bonds, weirdly enough. Made some good money on that one."

Behind her, Miriet asks, "...Al-Ameri?"

She sounds confused. And she isn't using Al-Ameri's nickname anymore. The way Al-Ameri's smile falters is real; the fact that she lets Rosperre see it happen is calculated.

Desperate. Afraid. Every good lie starts with the truth. Her hands are shaking.

"Before that, my name was Rose of Eternity of Evergardanna for about six months." She laughs self-consciously. "It sounds stupid, but I was doing a variant of the lost heir scam. People love it when those kinds of characters have elaborate names."

Rosperre isn't smiling anymore. He's staring at her warily, with something that isn't yet fear in his eyes.

Lets see if she can't change that. Al-Ameri runs a hand through her hair, a classic nervous gesture; she lets her fingers wrap around the thing she finds there as she does and slips it into her palm.

"I was a destitute comet speculator for a few weeks, a down-on-her-luck escort, a charity organizer... I mean, fuck, if I tried to list them all we'd never be able to leave." She pauses. This is the part that's going to hurt. "I never stayed in any of those roles too long. Those people were just... personalities I wore. And then, in a backwater bar in the middle of nowhere"—she risks the briefest of glances back at Miriet's face, but whatever she's feeling isn't showing in her expression—"I found another mark, a valuable one. I thought it would be an easy job. Someone I could fuck over and leave without regret."

Fuck. Fuck. She isn't about to start crying. Not now. But her body doesn't listen to her; she has to pause a moment to wipe her eyes.

"I told her I loved her. And then I stayed, and I told her it again, and again—and I didn't even realize how quickly I'd started to mean it."

"You..." Rosperre says, his voice a growl.

Al-Ameri turns away from him, to face Miriet once more. This part's important.

Miriet looks stricken. Her eyes have gone wide, and Al-Ameri can't tell if she's crying too or if it's just that her own tears are making everything look watery. "Alli," she says softly. "I..."

She can't help but smile. If nothing else, it feels good to hear the nickname out of Miriet's mouth again.

"I'm sorry," she tells her, no longer even bothering to pay attention to Rosperre. This is between them now. "I love you. I mean that. More than anything I've ever said to anyone in my entire life, I mean that. But I've been lying to you for too long now." She clutches the object in her hand tighter, waiting for her moment. "I was afraid to tell you the truth. Afraid you wouldn't want me anymore if you knew the things I'd done. And I need to let you be free."

"Don't do anything rash," Miriet says. She's frozen in place. Al-Ameri can see the internal struggle she's going through: unsure what Al-Ameri's about to say or do next but aware something big is coming, caught between trying to stop her and trying to talk her down.

Al-Ameri smiles.

No one in this room is stupid. Right now, all three of them are aware of the stakes. If Rosperre wants to use Al-Ameri to keep Miriet trapped, then there's only two options open to Al-Ameri now: take him out of the equation, or take herself out of the equation.

"This isn't rash. I'm not going to keep you trapped anymore. And I'm not going to let your brother keep you trapped either. I'm sorry. I love you. I'm setting you free."

With one fluid movement, Al-Ameri presses the object in her hand to the side of her head.

"No!" two voices call out at once.

Miriet leaps at her first, but Rosperre is closer. He leaps at her, trying to pull her down into cover, to rip the object in her hands away—

And Al-Ameri doesn't fight him. She lets him keep the momentum of his movement, uses his own desperation against him as she slips out of his grasp, throws herself at him, and—with all the power of panicked desperation behind her strike—slams the lock pick she's holding against the side of his head.

Al-Ameri's no bodybuilder. She doesn't need to be. The lock pick is small, but it has a strong, hefty base, and Rosperre's own momentum gives it the extra bit of force it needs. There's a harsh smack! as it impacts the side of his head, a strange sort of hollow sound and then without any sort of fanfare his eyes cross and his expression goes limp and he collapses to the floor with a dazed sort of expression on his face.

For a moment, the only noise Al-Ameri can hear is the sound of her own breathing. It occurs to her, staring down at his suddenly-limp form, that she might have actually killed him.

She wasn't trying to. She didn't mean to. But—

Is it better that there's no blood? Or worse? She doesn't know, and she doesn't like that she doesn't know. She wants to check his breathing, but reaching down the few inches to his body seems like the most impossible task imaginable.

She falls backwards instead. Her hands are shaking. She's sitting on the ground, on pale white tile that probably costs more than she's ever made in her life. She blinks, and Miriet is there, crouched in front of her.

"Um," Al-Ameri says. She wants to reach out for her, but—will she accept that right now? Or will she push her away? "Miriet. I'm so sorr—"

She can't finish the sentence, because Miriet is leaping at her to pull her into a desperate, crushing hug.

"Alli," she all but sobs, clutching at her shoulders, her nails digging into Al-Ameri's skin with talon-like force. "How dare you, don't you ever scare me like that again. Do you hear me?"

This is... Al-Ameri's not sure if she's ever seen Miriet so emotional. Maybe at their wedding. Maybe not even then. She nods, once, mechanically, and then to her own embarrassment realizes she's about to start sobbing too. All the fear she's wanted to feel since the moment their hopper was rammed is finally bubbling back up from the place where she pushed it all down to, threatening to overwhelm her.

Miriet's arms feel so nice. She buries her face into her wife's shoulder and lets herself cry.

"I'm sorry," she murmurs. "I'm sorry, I'm so sorry."

"Don't apologize. I'm the one who should be sorry. I never guessed he would've—I put you in so much danger—"

"Don't be stupid. It's not your fault." Al-Ameri hesitates a moment, and then adds. "I didn't... I wasn't lying. About any of it."

"...I know." Miriet's hand comes up to rest on Al-Ameri's hair. "Even you're not that good a liar. I think."

"I used you. I didn't." She hiccups. It's absurd, how pathetic she sounds right now. "I didn't want to lose you. I should've told you a long time ago. But I meant it when I said I loved you. I love you. And if you don't believe me, I understand—"

"Shh," Miriet interrupts. She pulls Al-Ameri in tighter. "I should have told you too. About everything."

"It's not the same."

"We can talk about it later, all right?"

Al-Ameri nods. Miriet looks ashen, and she's trembling too. Later is right, Al-Ameri thinks; right now, she needs to take care of Miriet.

She gets her arms around her and pulls her close in return: no one around them, no past or future to worry about, nothing but Miriet's breath on her shoulder and Miriet's body warm in her arms.

---

The first thing Miriet does is give Son En Met a promotion.

What they're actually going to be doing in their new role, Al-Ameri has absolutely no idea; and she has a suspicion neither Miriet nor Son En Met know either. It's as much a prize for loyalty as it is an actual job—though Al-Ameri has to admit that, if anyone's earned it, it's them.

Plus, looking at their beaming face and the way their augments cycle bright, overjoyed colors as they accept Miriet's praise, Al-Ameri has a feeling they'll excel in whatever role Miriet ends up putting them in. They have that kind of energy to them: passion to spare, all of it used in the service of whatever goal they've decided to take on next.

None of them know what's happening next, really; the ship's crew (minus the cheery Son En Met) is full of a nervous, roiling energy, an entire cruiser's staff of people suddenly under new management and not entirely sure what that means for them. Some of them seem to be every bit as overjoyed to have Miriet back, others seem on edge and resentful. And Al-Ameri knows better than anyone else that a lot of them on both sides of the equation will be doing their very best lying about what their true feelings are.

It's an unstable situation, especially with Rosperre still managing to complicate things—he's not dead, but he's not exactly alive either. He's being kept, under lock and key and IV alike, in the cruiser's hospital wing, attended at all times by someone who Miriet's relatively confident won't betray them.

(They don't know if he'll wake. Miriet goes down there every couple of days and stays there for hours at his bedside, just staring at him. Al-Ameri's not sure what she thinks about it all. Sometimes she's sure Miriet's planning to pull the plug; other times, watching the expression on her face, she thinks some part of Miriet still wants him to wake up.

Maybe it would be better if she'd hit him harder when she had the chance. But what's done is done, and Al-Ameri's not going to take that choice away from her now.)

Tonight, though, things are good. Not peaceful, exactly, but as peaceful as things can be in the aftermath of the chaos that their lives have suddenly become. She and Miriet have retired to one of the cruiser's less-ostentatious rooms—it's decorated with rare outer-system fossils, because less ostentatious is an extremely relative term on this ship—and they're finishing off a meal that almost certainly isn't poisoned.

It's good food. Al-Ameri likes the head chef here, even if she's only ninety-percent certain they're not trying to kill her.

The silence is quiet. Companionable. Which is why, as Al-Ameri finishes off her last bite of salt-oyster lasagne, she has to open her big mouth.

"So," she asks Miriet, trying and failing to sound casual, "what next?"

To Miriet's credit, she doesn't brush the question away. She hums, thinking and then finally she says, "Good question."

"I do try."

That earns her a smile from Miriet. "Well," she muses, "we still haven't taken our honeymoon."

Huh. She's not wrong. That feels like a full lifetime ago.

"I mean"—Al-Ameri shrugs—"good dinner and good company on a fancy ship? Might not be what I originally thought we were doing, but I don't have much right to complain."

"I'd say you do, but... regardless." Miriet laughs. "It's not an easy decision. My other siblings will know something's wrong, with Rosperre gone radio silent. I don't know whose side they'll take." She sighs. "I don't know if they knew of his plan to begin with. Disbanding the crew's always an option. We could throw them off the trail, I'm sure, long enough to flee once more..."

That'd be easy. If there's one thing Al-Ameri's good at, it's fleeing. But—

"Well," she says. "Yeah, we could do that. Or we could put the plan you wanted all along back into action. Couldn't we?"

Miriet stiffens. Blinks. Gives Al-Ameri a look. "That would be dangerous."

"I mean, yeah."

"Incredibly stupid."

"Yeah."

"Inadvisable all around."

Al-Ameri grins at her. "You want to try it, though, don't you?"

"I... I wouldn't dream of putting you in danger. Not again."

Al-Ameri leans back extravagantly against one of the fossils, still smiling. "And I'm not about to hold you back, remember? Besides, I'd be throwing myself into danger this time. Eyes wide open."

At Miriet's stunned look—hope and trepidation together in one—she leans over and takes her hand.

"Look," she says, "you don't have to decide anything just now, all right? Think about it, that's all."

"I will," Miriet says, and smiles back, and pulls her into a kiss, and for a moment everything is all right.