Chapter Text
We have not touched the stars,
nor are we forgiven, which brings us back
to the hero’s shoulders and the gentleness that comes,
not from the absence of violence, but despite
the abundance of it.
FIVE YEARS AFTER THE FINAL DEATH OF THE KING NOT-SO-UNDYING,
THE PIECE-OF-SHIT EMPEROR JOHN GAIUS, AND THE UNDOING OF HIS SAINTS, FISTS AND GESTURES.
It’s unusual to see a shuttle landing.
Nothing and no one comes here anymore. People leave, sometimes, usually in body bags. Blood of Eden factions war in the streets, mostly with Cohort units off the leash the way they have been for years, but sometimes with each other. But every day is the same, more or less: there’s the waking up in some alley or other, the scramble for water or coffee (if someone’s stolen it), the tallying of the day’s tasks and chores.
But when the shuttle lands, everything gets upset.
There’s the shout from the rooftop lookout – “Something’s landed! Look!” – and the chatter of how shiny it is, how cool the metal looks, how much money those parts would fetch. There’s the scramble of feet and boots, running around to get a better look, to wake up friends and siblings. There’s the cries of one name in particular, of, “Come see! Come see!” and the woman who is everyone’s de facto leader, older sister, and quartermaster (sometimes all at once) comes forward.
“What is it?” she asks, voice rough from the three-hour sleep she’d gotten in. Her skin is stiff and raw with sunburn; her back aches from yesterday’s work. “What’s wrong?”
“Shuttle landing!” they all chorus. “Shuttle landing! Come see!”
She goes and she sees. There are four people exiting the shuttle. They come out one by one, and it’s clear these people seem to have been here before; they’re already wearing cloaks and hats and masks, thus even better prepared than the Blood of Eden soldiers that stopped arriving years ago.
First comes someone who might be a man, tall and thin, dark eyes, squinting into the light around a mask and a hood. The second person emerging doesn’t wear a mask and the face feels familiar; something about that piercing gray stare and that sharp, curved nose…
There’s a third person, but that’s less important suddenly, because the fourth person emerges, all long wavy hair escaping its braids and wide eyes and says, “It looks different than I remember it.”
At that voice, a handful of people, older than they were once and some none the wiser, start whispering, “Is she…? Is that…?” until their leader silences them with the lifting of one scarred hand.
“I think you’re just older, Nums,” that third person from the shuttle is saying in a low voice.
“Yes, being four years and…” she counts on one finger, “however-many-months really does give you perspective, I suppose.” She heaves a labored sigh and looks up at that third person, then at the man with the thin face and dark eyes. “It’s nice to be Nona again,” she says, sincerity so bright and blinding it nearly gives the closest onlookers a headache. “I missed it. I think.”
The leader of this little group freezes in the shadows. She takes one breath, then another. Behind her, a boy hisses, “There’s no fucking way.”
His – their – leader turns. “Satyam, if you don’t shut up right now –”
In front of the shuttle, the tall, thin person’s gray-eyed counterpart looks around as though she – she was a she, anyway, last time – can hear them. The place the shuttle came to rest is one of few empty spaces in the vicinity; it’s the empty yard of a building that has served many purposes in its time, and it’s a building most of the local children know well. It was a safe place, once. A place where secrets were kept… and spilled.
As the little group of four continue to talk, the woman everyone called for by name when the shuttle landed creeps forward just in time to hear the long-haired woman ask, “Do you think Hot Sauce and the gang are still here? I miss all of them, even Honesty, though I’m pretty sure he’d still hate me… even more if he knew what I was now.”
The boy freezes. He blinks and prods his leader in the back. “Did you hear that?”
In the shadow of the building that was once the school, Hot Sauce – face no longer stiff, back no longer aching – freezes again. “Yeah,” she breathes. Then she turns and runs.