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It’s like clockwork, Sasha thinks.
Since she’s made a point to be as uncooperative as possible, Aurinko’s stopped the faux-friendly negotiations and simply given the order to lock her in the spare room, bare but for a bed, a bathroom, a chair and table, a porthole, and a surveillance camera. As far as she can tell, Aurinko, Ilkay, and Sikuliaq take turns guarding her, while Rita keeps track of the video feed.
They’re spread thin, wary, tired, missing a member of their crew, and tensions are made high by just her presence. It would not be impossible to escape.
Sasha doesn’t try. Yet.
And three times a day, on the dot, like clockwork, Juno comes in with a tray of food.
“Be careful, Steel,” Ilkay growls, which is procedure by now.
Juno waves her off; he doesn’t even carry his blaster in here, either because he doesn’t want to take the risk that Sasha will try to disarm him, or because he simply thinks Sasha doesn’t pose enough of a threat. Sasha can’t tell which one. She’s found that she can’t tell much about Juno Steel, these days.
Ilkay sends Sasha one last warning look, and then the door slides shut.
“Hey,” Juno says.
Sasha sits primly in her single chair, which she’s dragged over by the porthole to watch the vast expanse of nothing.
Juno sets down the tray on the table like her silence is to be expected. Maybe, she supposes, thinking of all the years that have passed between them without a single civil conversation, it is.
When she makes no attempt to move, he leans against the table and filches a bite from her plate, waving the fork at her before popping it into his mouth. “Lunch?”
Sasha sighs, long-suffering—Juno grins like it’s something familiar—and complies, bringing her chair closer to eat. She snatches back her fork and twirls it between her fingers. “You may as well ask your questions now, Juno,” she says.
The grin falls off Juno’s face. “That’s not—I told you, this isn’t an interrogation, Sasha.”
Sasha’s certain his family wouldn’t agree—surely the amount of information Sasha knows, on Dark Matters’ inner workings, the Radicals, the Aurinkos themselves, hasn’t slipped any of their minds—but she’ll allow Juno his fantasies. Or lies. “Just another hour in prolonged captivity, then.”
“It isn’t—” Juno releases a heavy breath. Sasha raises an eyebrow. “Fine. Sure, that’s exactly what it is. Eat up.”
So she eats. It’s Juno’s cooking, like always—real food, not cheap nutrient bars or protein paste. Sasha wonders if the meals are just part of his job, if he volunteered, if he’s cooking for the whole crew or just her.
The first few times, Juno had tried to strike up a conversation, but now he just walks to the porthole and takes in the tiny view, waiting for her to finish. It’s fine, Sasha thinks. The silence isn’t uncomfortable.
Then, tentatively, Juno says, “We could let you free on the ship, Sasha. We could— talk. If—” He gets that look on his face when he’s about to tell her something she doesn’t want to hear— “You give us your word that you won’t try and escape. And that you won’t try to contact Dark Matters and turn us in.”
Sasha levels a look at him. This is an ultimatum he’s made every other conversation, and she still doesn’t believe it. “Surely you’re not really asking me that, Juno.”
Juno throws up his hands, walking away. “Worth a shot,” he says bitterly.
“So that’s it,” Sasha says, like they haven’t had this roundabout conversation about ten times now. “I’m being blackmailed. My silence and obedience for my freedom.”
“Sasha… don’t.”
“Am I wrong?”
“You’re here,” Juno tries, “because you’re safer here than—”
Sasha gives in to the disbelieving laugh bubbling in her throat. “Frankly, Juno, I’ve had enough of this—even I never tried to pretend I captured you to keep you safe.”
“Nah, actually, I’m pretty sure there was a bit of a ‘this is for your own good’ sentiment thrown in there—”
The chair scrapes loudly against the floor when she pushes it back to look him full in the face. “Oh, and isn’t that exactly what you’re doing? I’m a prisoner on your ship because I’m safer here? Really, Juno?”
Her voice rises without her permission. She doesn’t know why she’s so adamant on turning this into a fight. She’s playing right into Juno’s hand, she knows, biting at everything like some cornered animal, but she can’t help it. For the first time in years, in decades, she’s completely unarmed—in both physical weapon and intel— and it’s a weakness that’s like an itch, an ever-present lack, and something has to give, somewhere.
“Sasha, I’m trying to—”
“And don’t pretend that you’re simply, what, doing this out of the kindness of your heart? Like you don’t hold a grudge against me for hurting you, your family? That’s not like you, Juno.”
She’s hit a nerve. Hurt flashes across Juno’s face. “Fuck’s sake, Sasha, what do you want me to—” He pinches the bridge of his nose, muscles tense in his jaw. “Y’know what? Yeah. Yeah, I am mad. I’m fucking livid, okay, Wire, you tried to kill my family and I—”
The venom in his voice stings more than she expected. This part of the conversation, they haven’t had yet. “I never tried any such—”
“Cut the crap, Sasha,” Juno snarls. “You were never going to let them go, alright, I know. You weren’t going to trust whatever they said, you knew they weren’t going to say anything, you were never going to help me help them or whatever, you were just— messing with me—”
“I was giving you an out.”
“You lied to me.” It’s a child’s naive insistence, the way Juno looks at her, all heartbroken and disappointed: but you promised, Sasha. “What would’ve been the best-case scenario for you, huh?” he presses. “Me behind bars for life, or maybe a new name and a lifetime supply of Dark Matters surveillance— if I’d talked. And, what? The rest of my family tortured for months on end until your interrogators got bored and disappeared them quietly? That’s it, right? That was your plan, and you actually tried to get me to play along.”
“Juno…”
Juno shakes his head, swallows. “Fuck you, Wire. Sure, maybe I did trick you too, and maybe we are keeping you on this ship. But you have no idea how much that hurt.”
And it’s all Sasha can do to keep her expression clear, because the disgust in his eye is worse than betrayal; because he’s right to be disgusted, she’s been thinking lately, like a sandstorm settling to reveal a cliff’s edge, and she isn’t sure anymore of the path she’d been so set on walking.
Because here’s what she’d been so afraid of, Juno Steel with enough fury for a bottomless pit, and she has no one to blame but herself.
In the ensuing quiet, Ilkay’s voice crackles in Juno’s earpiece, and Juno turns away from her to reply. “Yeah, we’re—it’s fine,” he says. At his side, his hand flexes, a clench and release of tension. “We’re just. Talking. Vespa, I swear everything’s... fine.”
Ilkay relents, and then the silence is truly suffocating. Juno crosses his arms and exhales, every line of his back tense and unmoving.
You lied to me.
“In that case,” Sasha says, voice too wobbly to put up any facade of coldness, “you never answered my question. What am I doing here, Juno?”
Juno whirls around, looking somehow twice as furious.
“Because you won’t listen to anything I’m trying to tell you—”
Sasha could laugh. “I meant why bring me along in the first place? You had your chance to escape; we wouldn’t have been able to track you. So why hold me here like a—”
Juno stills. “And what would have happened to you?” he asks. “If I’d left you behind, with Dark Matters?”
Sasha bristles. “I’m their Director—”
“Yeah, and you told me yourself you ‘took care’ of your own Director when you had the chance! Hell, all I did was let it slip that I knew you and you thought you had to shoot me. And then, what, a whole crew of dangerous suspects escape with the Curemother Prime, under your nose—you think they’d just let that slide?”
“I can handle myself,” Sasha snaps right back, and oh, this is an odd reversal of roles, isn’t it. But what can she say, she’s been with this new, strange crew for over a day now, and her patience is fraying; maybe she really is out of practice— “My agents are loyal to me, and even if they weren’t, if you think this is the first time I’ve handled a bunch of unruly—”
“Oh, sure, but is this also not the first time you’ve messed up on a mission this big? ‘Cause I think I know what’s gonna happen if you try and contact Dark Matters again, and I think—”
“I don’t need your misguided attempts to help, Juno,” Sasha says tightly. Her hands are shaking. She clasps them together.
“—it’s over, Wire,” Juno says. “You can’t go back. And you know it. You know, and I’m sorry. But you’re done.”
It’s Sasha’s turn to look away in stony silence, because he’s right.
Goddamn him, he’s right.
“Sasha,” Juno says again, and at this point Sasha misses the quiet, misses not needing to feel as much as Juno Steel forces her to, every fucking time— “Y’know. Just because I’m mad at you doesn’t mean I don’t give a shit about you anymore.”
She glances up at him again. He looks pained and earnest in equal measure.
“Oh,” Sasha says, voice small.
Juno sits down on her bed like holding himself up is suddenly too much of a chore. “You taught me that, I think.”
“Did I.”
He’s quiet for a long moment, picking at a hangnail, and Sasha almost thinks he’s not going to answer. Then: “Sure. Over and over. When Ben died, and we weren’t talking at the time, and I was determined to ruin myself. When we—”
“Juno—”
“When we finally got in the HCPD,” Juno presses on, “and you were doing great but I wasn’t handling it so well. Even on your stupid Dark Matters exam—”
She shuts her eyes. “Don’t.”
“—No, even way earlier than that, when I was so, so ready to blame myself I never gave you any room to grieve. I’m pretty sure you hated me at some point.”
“I never—I didn’t hate you,” she whispers. “I just. Hated what you were doing to yourself.”
“Oh. Well.” Juno tilts his head, sends her a look. “I think I know what that’s like.”
It’s more than she can take, his knowing, understanding pity. Sasha turns her back to him, facing the table so he can’t see her face. It’s over. You’re done. Her chest heaves. For the first time in years she feels adrift, with nothing to keep her anchored anymore, not a goal or a purpose or a job or a home.
Her entire fucking career, she thinks. Over twenty years of work.
She can’t think about it. Not here. The calculations spin away from her, wide and impossible and terrifying. I don’t know who I am, without this. If not this. I don’t know what else is left of me.
What does it say about her, that she can’t tell what’s right or wrong anymore without someone telling her who to shoot. That she doesn’t know when she stopped thinking about what she was doing anymore and just started following orders, a set of rules and expectations and protocols laid out in her head, everything else locked away and marked irrelevant.
There’s an ugly, churning feeling in her gut. She wonders if Annie would hate her.
“Sasha?”
She blinks the wetness in her eyes back. Dimly, she realizes Juno’s said her name more than once now. When she looks behind her, Juno is watching her back, his gaze so open and comfortable it makes her uncomfortable.
“Are you, uh…”
Changed or not, Juno Steel is not the sort of person who would jump to console someone he hasn’t spoken kindly with in years. “I’m fine,” she says, firm enough that Juno just nods, and waits.
She sighs. Then she gets up and sits beside him on the bed, their shoulders not quite touching. Juno scoots back and lies down, legs dangling over the edge. After a moment, she does the same.
“I miss Mick,” he says.
“Oh.” It’s not something the Juno she knew would readily admit. “Me too.” Even this is something still painfully familiar: her and Juno and Ben and Mick, sprawled out on one bed until afternoon turned to night, whenever one of them couldn’t bear to go home.
“Last time we talked in person, he… he was dealing with some shit, you know, and— I didn’t… realize. Rita helps me get a message through every few days, but. I don’t know, it still feels like I’m not there for him enough.”
“I… I haven’t talked to him since, well…”
“Since your promotion,” he sighs. “Yeah.”
“How is he?”
He shrugs. “Alright, last I heard. Apparently he’s working on some manuscript. No idea how that’s turning out.”
She pushes herself up on her elbows and stares at him over her shoulder. “Mick Mercury,” she says flatly. “A writer.”
His leg knocks into hers in a gentle rebuke, ankles bumping. “Uh, yeah, Mick Mercury. Try anything once, Mick Mercury? Wild storyteller, Mick Mercury? Y’know—”
“Unstoppable dreamer, Mick Mercury,” she murmurs. “Right.” She flops back down on the bed.
There’s a grin in his voice. “Yep. Hey, least one of us isn’t a wanted criminal.”
She thumps her fist against his chest. Juno laughs.
“Too soon?”
“Don’t even think about it.”
“If it makes you feel better,” Juno says lightly, “I know what you’re going through.”
Sasha snorts despite herself. Then the joke catches up with her, and she sobers. “Juno…” Her breath shakes in her chest. “What do I do.”
Juno’s silent for a long time.
“I can’t answer that for you, Wire.”
She closes her eyes. She can’t answer it, either; she doesn’t know. She thinks about Curemother Prime sitting somewhere aboard this ship, and about the Aurinkos’ ridiculous, unbelievable plan, and the possibility of success. They’ve already gotten this far.
It seemed—simple, back in that rigid and lonely place, a clear line of thought: Juno and the others made themselves too dangerous to ignore; thus they needed to be dealt with; thus Dark Matters would deal with them. She was Director, the mission was important, and Juno was her family; thus she would deal with it herself.
No time for what-ifs, or second guesses, or considering the idea of being wrong. Just this: Dark Matters worked for the greater good; thus Sasha Wire would work for Dark Matters. She’d climb the endless ladder and clean out the dirt of the place and learn to live with bloody hands if she had to. For the greater good, for the greater good, an idea she has wrapped her fucking life around, even when it wasn't making sense anymore.
Now, through the fog of terror comes that same cold, icy logic, bringing a different conclusion: Dark Matters will never leave her alone.
She knew this when she agreed to work for them. They already think she’s a traitor after her last failure, and whether she tries to get in contact with them again or not won’t matter. She might be lucky if they assume she’s dead, killed by the infamous Aurinko family, though they won’t easily do that without proof.
Damned if I do, damned if I don’t.
She thinks about that, and then she thinks about the only path that has remained open to her, steady and unshakable, in the form of Juno Steel.
This is how logic works, this is what Dark Matters taught her: Remove the options you cannot perform, and what remains is your way forward.
Juno startles when she sits up quickly. “Wire?”
She runs a hand through her hair a few times. “Open the door.”
“What?”
“Open the door,” she repeats impatiently, trying to straighten the wrinkles in her shirt.
Juno eyes her warily as he gets to his feet. “Um, why would I do that?”
She catches her reflection in the glass of the porthole. She looks sharp enough for a captive former Dark Matters agent, she supposes; serious; put together; starlit. When she meets Juno’s eyes, he looks, hopelessly, hopeful.
“Well?” Sasha says, tone brusque. “I’ll behave. I thought you wanted me to talk to Aurinko.”