Work Text:
It didn’t take Stelle long after her arrival on the Astral Express to realise something was up with March 7th. There were a few things about her, things she did or didn’t do, that struck Stelle as being almost… out of place. If there really was something going on under the surface, she was doing a good job of hiding it.
While Stelle was very curious about the shorter girl, she didn’t want to ask too many questions in case it was a sensitive topic. This called for an investigation, she supposed. The notebook Dan Heng had ever so graciously lent her would finally come in handy.
One week of observation on Stelle’s part had produced the following list of things she did or wanted to know and questions she wanted answered:
- What are the pills March takes every day? (Some polite questioning earned nothing more than “an IPC doctor prescribed them to her”.)
- March never wears tight clothing around her hips like Stelle’s pencil skirt. Only puffy skirts, flowy dresses and baggy pants. (Confirmed by a stealthy raid of March’s wardrobe.)
- No one could confidently agree on the story of March’s arrival on the express. (The girl herself told Stelle that Himeko unfroze her, Dan Heng refused to answer, Welt hesitantly claimed it wasn’t him and Himeko would only give a vague answer before offering a cup of coffee.)
Two more days without any new information encouraged Stelle to move on to actually investigating. Not that she was bored of just watching March or anything. Definitely not. And so, she decided to poke around in the Data Bank. The trailblazer had gotten quite familiar with the database, even playing a game to see how long a change she made to an entry would last before Dan Heng would fix it. On her adventures in the Data Bank, she discovered profiles for all members of the Crew, and she had learned how to view an entry’s history (it was the easiest way to see if Dan Heng had fixed it since she couldn’t remember all the changes she made).
March’s profile in the Data Bank was very peculiar right from the start for the sole reason that it was created on March 9th, two days after the girl’s arrival. The next peculiar thing would provide an answer to one of her questions: a removed section titled ‘Arrival’ that had been edited once before its removal. The edited version stated that Himeko had unfrozen March. But it was the original that was so much more interesting.
March 7th, upon recovery from space, was removed from the Six-Phased Ice by Welt out of respect for their privacy.
That answered Stelle’s third point, but only served to create more questions. The entry claimed March was unfrozen by Welt out of respect for their privacy, and this didn’t add up. March was obviously female and Welt was obviously male.
- What is March? She looks like a girl, but the Data Bank implied that she was a boy. And the Data Bank is always right because Dan Heng, who is also always right, is the person who updates it.
It was a dead end. Not like she could just flip March’s skirt and pull her underwear down to check. That was rude. Besides, she had a noticeable chest, and men don’t have breasts, right? The Data Bank said they don’t, but it wasn’t very trustworthy at the moment.
A midnight raid of the medicine cabinet and kitchen answered Stelle’s first question. Inspecting a bottle that undoubtable contained the pills March took, she finally found a label indicating what the pills actually contained: oestradiol.
Stelle had to ignore her slight distrust of the Data Bank as she searched for an entry on oestradiol. Apparently, it helped girls be more girly when their body wasn’t making enough girl hormones (well, that’s how she interpreted the entry, anyway. Too many big words). Yet another dead end.
Stelle’s investigation of March 7th had been on hold until she had been playing another one of her Data Bank games: seeing how many letters she could add to an acronym before Dan Heng noticed and fixed it. Today’s acronym was LGBTQIA+ and the trailblazer had already added REW between the T and Q. She was about to add a Y between the B and T when she accidentally clicked part of the scrollbar. With a huff of annoyance, she watched the page scroll to where she tapped, but that annoyance faded when one word jumped out at her from the entry: oestradiol. Somewhere under the heading ‘Transgender’ (Apparently ‘T’ was not, in fact, for tea).
A few hours of research were enough for Stelle to conclude her investigation, finally staring at a hypothesis in her notebook that connected all the pieces she had:
‘March is male-to-female transgender’
Now it was time for a confrontation. Actually, that sounded a bit mean and intimidating. She just wanted to ask a question, after all, and had absolutely no ill intent whatsoever. It wasn’t like her crush on March had disappeared after reaching her hypothesis.
Stelle had to take a moment to remember what she was going to ask when March’s face poked out of her door with an adorable expression of curiosity, a smile tugging at the corner of her lips upon seeing Stelle. “Uh… I have a question.” That definitely wasn’t awkward in the slightest. Not at all.
March giggled, indicating that maybe it was awkward. The giggle was still cute, though. “Yeah? What’s up?”
“I hope this isn’t too random… or intrusive… or insensitive-” Stelle’s cheeks were pinched.
“Just ask already!”
“Are you trans?” That stunned March. Then her expression changed rapidly from surprise to confliction to embarrassment (?) before she spoke up in a very high-pitched voice.
“W-why are you asking…?”
The taller girl shrugged, trying to hide the dread she felt at possibly having messed up big time. “Just wondering. I don’t need to know, but… I would like to.”
“Well…” March’s eyes looked everywhere except for where Stelle was. “I… Yeah, I am… Not that I was trying to hide it from you!” she assured. “I just… haven’t found a good chance to tell you.”
Stelle nodded in acknowledgement. “Okay, thanks for answering. Guess I should give Dan Heng his notebook back now.”
March’s mouth fell open as she watched Stelle walk off. “That’s it? You have nothing else to say?”
“Not really. You’re still the same March I know and love.” Okay, she really did mess something up. Part of that was supposed to stay in her head.
“Love?!”