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The door to security slams shut when Awayuki is a mere hairsbreadth away. It nearly catches the fabric of her gloves.
A hard-ricochet of emotion knocks in Awayuki’s chest, hitting on her ribs and knocking up into her throat. Stomach acid touches the back of her tongue. It tastes like panic. Once deployed, nothing short of ship-destroying force will open the ship’s airlock-tight doors. All that can be done is wait. Like sitting prey. Like a grape on the vine. There’s a vent in the corner of the room. Needles prick the back of Awayuki’s neck like teeth; she pivots around, breath like an electric shock in her chest, but there’s nothing there.
Just Mashiro.
Mashiro is still sitting exactly as they were a moment ago, blue light from the security screens laying sharply on the knife-edge white of their boiler suit. Each security camera’s live, displayed feed reflects distortedly on the one-way plastic mirror of the uniform’s helmet. Empty halls stretch over the panel concealing their face. Their holographic ship-control menu display is projected out from their wrist, but from this angle, Awayuki can’t see what controls they’re going through, and shortly enough, Mashiro clicks the whole thing closed.
They ask her, “Are you done?”
It’s a callous response, but Awayuki has long since learned of Mashiro’s soft, warm core under their glass-cold exterior.
“I don’t understand how you can be so calm,” Awayuki says.
“There’s no point in panic,” Mashiro answers steadily. “Besides, this will all be over soon.”
Awayuki bursts, “Because us crew members will all be dead?”
“Technically an imposter only needs to kill as many crewmates as is necessary to end their majority on a ship.” Mashiro flexes their fingers, and the white of their gloves catches light. They hold up three fingers: “If there are three imposters, three crewmates can be left alive; if there are two, then two crewmates can be left alive.” One finger comes down; Mashiro is holding up two: “And so on. The priority is making it so that crewmates cannot hold a majority vote for ejection.”
“That’s seriously not reassuring!” Awayuki shudders. “How do you even..how can you be sure?”
Mashiro shrugs. “I’m more experienced than you. I’ve been in these situations before.”
Awayuki hesitates.
“Hey,” Mashiro says, gentler this time. “I’ve been with you this whole time, right?”
Yes.
Yes. Awayuki trusts the white of Mashiro’s spacecraft-uniform more than she does her own self. This entire voyage, Mashiro has been by Awayuki’s side. For what seems like the entirety of her life, Mashiro has been by Awayuki’s side. Mashiro, who seems to have always been flighty even as a child, born for the cosmos of space; they traveled, and worked, and traveled, and disappeared, again and again, but they always came back to that station on the outer edge of Awayuki’s galaxy, where she slowly, dyingly grew up. They found her in the hydroponic gardens of the inner core that Awayuki played in as a child, and the colder outer rings where Awayuki sulked as a teen, and the space-bay that Awayuki worked as an adult.
Yuki, Mashiro said that day, what feels like years ago, although she knows it’s only been ten months, You aren’t happy here. I can get you an open-spot on the next aircraft docking. Come with me.
Yes.
“I know.” Awayuki gnaws at her lip, and her heart slowly, unsteadily stabilizes. “I just…”
“There’s no use rushing off to the emergency button with no solid evidence on anyone,” Mashiro says. There’s an underlaying hardness in her voice. “You just make yourself an easily target.”
“I don’t know how you’re always so assured,” Awayuki mutters. “You always seem so sure in the meetings. You always seem to know who it is.”
“All you have to do is look for discrepancies,” Mashiro says. “The best lies are told with truth, and most people are simply not good at lying.”
“I just don’t want people to die,” Awayuki says.
“I know,” they say simply.
Awayuki steps away from the door. One step, and then another. Her legs are stiff. Something uneasy is pooling in her stomach, slipping down her spine; something about Mashiro’s voice, the lax slope of their body in the office chair, the fact Awayuki hasn’t seen their face in weeks - but it’s silly, it’s stupid. Anyone would be unnerved in a situation like this. The monitors beep; the computers stacked on the floor blink green and red and blue with small lights on their sides; the spacecraft hums mechanically around them. Awayuki takes another step forward. And another. Mashiro tilts her head at a thirty degree angle. It’s a remarkably feline motion, like a curious animal.
Because there’s no extra room on the chair, Awayuki sits on the floor beside it. Draws her legs to her chest. Rests her head against Mashiro’s leg, bulky shape of her own helmet making the motion only slightly awkward.
After a moment, Mashiro’s gloved hand comes to rest on the hazmat-material protecting Awayuki’s head. Their touch, even through two degrees of separation, is grounding.
Awayuki stares at the floor-vent.
“Worried?” Mashiro asks.
“I don’t know.”
“Hey. The doors being locked means that perhaps everyone will actually do their remaining tasks in the rooms wherein they’re stuck. No more close calls with asteroids if crewmates actually do their tasks, right?”
They sound, for a split second, genuinely annoyed at the incompetence.
Don’t be so harsh, Awayuki wants to say, but can’t quite get out the words. Everyone has been to afraid to do their jobs efficiently. The slow, methodical way crewmates have been picked off doesn’t lend itself well to efficiency. Neither does the fact that half the ship’s systems have been hijacked for weeks. First and foremost was the door system - and that means whoever directed the doors the shut trapped her and Mashiro in here intentionally.
“Don’t tease me,” is what she ends up saying.
Mashiro lightly knocks the plastic of her face-panel. “You make it so easy.”
“Mmnmgh..” Awayuki curls closer to herself, to Mashiro. “I don’t like being trapped in here. Especially with the vent.”
“I know.”
“I’m afraid.”
Mashiro tells her, “Don’t worry. I’ll keep you safe.”
It’s what they’ve told her from the start. It’s held true. From the very start, it’s held true. A horrible feeling curdles in Awayuki’s chest, something soft and small and guilty and afraid.
“Okay.”
“You’re such a worrier,” they say, although they sound fond.
Surely, Mashiro cannot be this calm.
Despite the scant and brief nature of their childhood meetings, Awayuki likes to think they grew up together. Small hand in small hand. The last ten months are overwhelming in comparison. The closest she’s ever been to Mashiro. The closest she’s ever been to anyone. They’ve eaten together and slept together and spent every other waking moment together. Awayuki once held Mashiro’s helmet with the palm of her hand and moved to unlatch their face panel and slip her hand through the gap, but even though the room was empty it was not closed, and Mashiro caught her wrist and held it so tight she thought her bones might rub together; it made her feel foolish. Her heart fluttered. She always knew Mashiro to be the more level-headed between the two of them, meticulous and calculative in a way that speaks to a lifetime governed by survival - always made something clutch tight in Awayuki’s chest. But in the past months, she’s found that it’s easy for Mashiro to get caught up in the moment, too. Mashiro slips their feet on the edge of thrills and gets snapped into the maw of traps, because they poked things in sheer curiosity.
Mashiro, she thinks. And because they aren’t technically supposed to know one another’s names, not technically supposed to know one another’s faces, either, or call one another by anything but colors - “White - ”
“Call me my name.”
The air of the ship is frigid-cold, even through the thick insulation of their hazmat-boiler uniforms. It’s cold in Awayuki’s lungs, and still she feels feverish with the primal beat of her heart. Makes her flush in the face. “Mashiro -”
Red.
A flash of red on the monitor. Awayuki looks up with a flinch, just in time to see blood splash the wall of a hallway and splatter the floor.
Oh.
That’s.
A murder. Right in front of her. Of them. On the screen. What hallway is that? The other side of the ship, right? The ship is small. There’s so much red that for a moment Awayuki can barely comprehend the colors. That’s. Brown. Brown died. Brown was killed. Red is standing above the body. Splattered in more red. Red is stretching arms idly above its head. It has a mouth on its stomach. Opening right through the suit. Red’s helmet turns. It looks right at the security camera. The blank plastic of its face panel shows nothing but a glinting gray.
It waves and makes a peace sign.
Awayuki watches as if in third person. White noise breaks in her head.
She -
A sigh.
Mashiro?
Mashiro sighed.
“Honestly,” Mashiro mutters.
Awayuki makes a small sound. Her heart beats so loud, she can barely hear her thoughts over the white noise, can barely hear her heart over the buzzing whirr of electronics in the security room, can barely think over -
“Awa,” Mashiro says.
It’s their pet name for her. Because she goes awawa in panic. Her real name is just Yuki, but Mashiro calls her Awa, so she’s Awayuki.
“I,” Awayuki says, and stops.
“Oh dear,” they say. “I thought this might happen.”
Mashiro stands up from the chair. Their hand slips off Awayuki’s head. Awayuki makes another sound. Mashiro’s blank face-panel looks at the monitors, where the imposter has left the scene, leaving behind a body, and then at Awayuki again.
They kneel in front of her. “Come on,” they say, threading their gloved hand through hers.
Awayuki looks down. At their hands. Gloves. Her purple gloves and purple uniform, dark against Mashiro’s gentle white. Awayuki’s hand is shaking.
“Come where,” she says. The door is still closed.
“The doors will open soon,” Mashiro says. “We’ll go to the emergency button. We saw the murder, didn’t we? It’s over. You’ll be alright.”
Awayuki says. “Mashiro.”
“Yes?”
“Mashiro. Mashiron. Mashiron.”
“Yes?”
“Aren’t you - nervous?”
Mashiro’s blank-helmet-face tilts again. Their hand squeezes hers. When it does, Awayuki feels a slight tremor of something. The same tremor she felt through Mashiro’s gloves that first day in navigation. There’s something off. There’s something wrong. Everything is off and wrong. She hasn’t seen Mashiro’s face in weeks.
It was Mashiro that found the first body, if only by technicality. Black’s body, the captain’s body, Captain Hareru - it was in navigation. Her and Mashiro were together, Awayuki a step behind, and Mashiro turned the corner into navigation first.
When Awayuki turned the corner, mere seconds later, Mashiro was kneeled at Black’s blood body, still seeping blood across the floor, hand on Black’s ripped-open stomach to stop the bleeding, white uniform staining red.
It’s a fresh kill, they told her, then rose again to their feet, blood dripping glossily. Their voice was level. It’s useless. Damage at this level is beyond saving. Purple, report the body.
“I’m really nervous,” Mashiro says. “I’m so nervous, I think I could die.”
“Yeah,” Awayuki says distantly, “that makes sense.”
“Awa,” Mashiro says. “Is it better to rip off the bandaid, or peel it away slowly?”
It’s a question they’ve asked before.
“Always rip it off,” Awayuki mutters. “I’ve told you before.”
“I was just checking if your answer changed.”
Mashiro leans their face into her shoulder. Mashiro squeezes her hand.
The door to security slides open with a loud clunk.
Mashiro pulls her to her feet.
“Come on,” they say, again, and just as she did that first day that Mashiro said come with me, Awayuki follows.
The walk to the emergency button is long and quiet. Awayuki steals glances at the security cameras, but the lack of the red active light shows that no one is watching back. They pass the heat of the upper engine and open door to the empty med-bay. When they reach the cafeteria -
Awayuki’s heart drops into the acid of her stomach.
Red is practically sprawled across the center-table, arm rested over the emergency-button’s cap-covering. Its - her? - its helmet is off, but the form underneath is still mostly mimicking a human, long red hair sprawling out, pointed ears and pointed horns curled above them. Its stomach is lolling open with a large, dangerous mouth.
It grins at them with a mouth of sharp teeth.
“White!” It greets cheerily. Awayuki abruptly becomes frozen with a crash of fond memories - Red in the cafeteria talking loudly, Red with her arm slung around Awayuki’s shoulder, Red telling her to loosen up, Red cheering when she eventually did loosen up. “I was waiting!”
“Red,” Mashiro says darkly.
“Oh loosen up,” Red says. “I did things just fine.”
What?
“This could have wrapped up days ago,” Mashiro says, sounding annoyed. These tones don’t match at all. What?
“Ugh,” Red says. “You full-time imposter types are so hard-line and cold.”
“Oh trust me,” Mashiro says. “You’ll find plenty of us that are agonizingly reckless. You’ll fit right in.”
“Wow,” Red blinks. “You’re like, actually annoyed.”
“This is why I prefer working alone,” Mashiro says. Her voice carries the edge of an inhuman growl.
Awayuki is frozen with -
sheer disbelief, terrified confusion, terror, the understanding that she knows what is happening here, the understanding that she might have known for weeks, the knowledge of something fundamentally and profoundly wrong, heat of anger, electric-shock of terror, clarity of a truth that cannot be denied, guilt that she might have already known, the stupid foolish feeling of being played, embarrassment, horror, a deep-cut wound of trust
- something.
“Hey man,” Red raises its still-gloved - hands? “I’m just imposter part time. I can’t keep up with your full-time standards.”
“Ugh.”
Red peers past Mashiro, to Awayuki. It - she - it makes a sound like a coo. “Are you saving that one for last? You like Purple a lot.”
“I’m keeping her,” Mashiro says.
Red whistles.
“Leave.”
Red rolls her eyes but stretches, and gets off the button. “Sure sure. I’ll meet you in…?”
“The bay within a few hours,” Mashiro says. “I expect everything to be ready to go.”
Red leaves with a wave.
Mashiro turns around, to face Awayuki. “Are you confused?”
Awayuki doesn’t answer.
That gets a sigh. They walk to the center island slowly, and seat themself, similar to red, atop the table with their legs outstretched. Their face still isn’t showing. “Other species call us imposters,” they say. “But within our own species, ‘imposter’ is a…job, or a ‘role,’ so to speak. That is why Sei - Red - mentioned ‘full time’ and ‘part time’ imposters.”
Is that supposed to make her feel better?
Is that seriously supposed to make her feel any better? Reassure her? Help her? Make her feel any less lost? Any less betrayed? Any less - really? Is Mashiro really - really?
The worst thing is that it works.
The information provides a small, small amount of grounding. And from that grounding wells anger. It sparks through her like a live wire, and catches flame.
“Really?” Awayuki hears herself say. “Mashiron. Mashiron.”
She whites out.
An impact through her fingertips. Her hands tangled in the collar of Mashiro’s white suit. Mashiro’s back hits hard where Awayuki slams them against the table. And she still can’t see their face. Awayuki’s fingers twitch. She looks at the emergency button.
“You can press it,” Mashiro tells her.
Her hands falter.
“I told you, remember? Imposters don’t need to kill everyone on a ship, only enough to even the vote. Red killing brown brought the number of crewmates down to two.”
“Oh.” A beat. “I thought there were more people left.”
“Green is dead in electrical,” Mashiro says. “I killed her myself.”
Awayuki’s hands falter again. Slacken. She’s so angry, she doesn’t know what to do. Like she herself has been cut open. But when her hands start to fall away, Mashiro’s own gloved hand comes up to catch them. The grip is firm.
Mashiro’s head shifts upward.
“Awa,” Mashiro says. “It’s okay to be angry. You can be angry. Letting yourself feel it is healthier than bottling it up.”
They can’t be -
“Was any of it real?” The words burn in Awayuki’s mouth. “Was any of - you, real?”
“I told you right?” There’s a bland smile in the calmness of Mashiro’s voice. “The best lies are told with truth.”
“I guess you’d know!”
“About lying? Definitely.”
“Full-time,” Awayuki echoes. Her grip tightens, again, but Mashiro doesn’t choke, but their grip on her wrists slackens and falls away, and Awayuki still can’t see her face. There’s no response at all, and a flash of worry falters her hands, then mounts into a landslide of fear at killing - the only person she has left, an imposter, her best friend, her only friend now, Mashiro.
The realization comes as something she’s always known, no matter how alien this context -
she doesn’t want them to die.
Once more, when Awayuki’s hands slacken away, Mashiro’s hand comes up to stop them. Not-dead. Barely even seems to be affected.
“It’s pathetic, isn’t it?”
Awayuki stares. “What?”
“This is what I and my kind do and does. I’m hungry, and it’s instinctual, and in a way, enjoyable - thrilling, really. Satisfying, more accurately. It’s pathetic.”
“Pathetic,” Awayuki echoes.
“Completely.”
Suddenly, and with a strength Awayuki cannot match, Mashiro pushes her aside and stands to their feet. They hold her by the hand, and begin walking. Awayuki stumbles, pulled to follow. The cafeteria is wide and empty and eerie with it. The windows outside show nothing but the dark video of space and distant stars. Mashiro’s hand on hers still has that slight tremor. In her head, their voice echoes: pathetic.
What I and my kind do and does.
The empty halls of the aircraft are fluorescent-white and steel-gray. They pass the weapons room, and the oxygen room, and each footstep sounds so loud.
“The other crewmate is in lower engine,” Mashiro tells her. “I am still deciding whether to clear this ship entirely, or leave a survivor.”
Impulsively, bitterly, Awayuki answers, “I thought you said you wouldn’t kill me.”
“You’ll be a survivor but you won’t be left to be found.” Mashiro pauses in their step, and turns their head to look at her; only now does Awayuki realize the angle looks unnatural. “More accurately, I’m deciding whether I’ll use that last, other crewmate as leverage on you.”
“I hate you,” Awayuki says, again on impulse.
Mashiro says nothing to that.
Awayuki, stubbornly, looks past them. They’ve come to navigation. The room is dark and dim, lit only by the light of the hall falling in and the blue screens of the navigational interfaces built into the wall. Two glass panels on the floor act as windows into space. Hareru was killed on one of those. Hareru -
realization.
Awayuki steps past Mashiro, into navigation. Mashiro follows a step behind her. Awayuki feels like blood has dried on her skin.
“You killed Black,” she says. “Just - in that split moment before I walked into the room after you. You killed Black.”
“Smart girl,” Mashiro praises. “I did.”
Awayuki whirls around and slams Mashiro against the wall. “You - !”
“It’s okay to rough-handle me you know. You won’t kill me on accident.”
The light of stars reflects in from every window. They reflect like a constellation on Mashiro’s one-way-mirror helmet. Awayuki’s own purple suit and opaque face panel reflects back at her. Heat burns her face like an oil spill.
Mashiro says, “I always told you to be more careful who you trusted.”
“I didn’t think you meant you!”
“I could have meant anyone.”
Ridiculous.
Horrible. When Mashiro made that offer that day, to join them in the vastness of space, not just from the relative safety of a massive station-hub, but from the freedom of an aircraft, soaring through galaxies, far and separated from the rigid social structures and set hierarchies of Awayuki’s home, that mind-numbing, soul-suffocating job in the bay, with people who had expectations from her, she thought - she thought -
And Mashiro didn’t lie, is the thing. Awayuki was happier on this ship.
She came into her own. They slept in the same bed. Mashiro confessed, I like following your lead when you have learned to take it. You’re inspiring to me. I act more outgoing than you sometimes, but I’m really not. Awayuki replied, I know.
Awayuki was so, unimaginably happy.
Don’t worry. I’ll keep you safe.
Why isn’t Mashiro throwing her off? Awayuki finds the seam their uniform and tugs at the buttons and the zipper and every wretched layer separating them. What would it take for Mashiro to throw her off? To kill her?
“I want a drink,” Awayuki mutters.
Mashiro says, “Ah. I’m afraid I won’t allow you that. Drinking to cope isn’t a good habit to build.”
And she still cant see their face. Can’t even see a single inch of skin.
Awayuki rips off her own purple gloves and throws them to the side in order to set at the process of undoing all the buttons of Mashiro’s uniform. Tears down the zipper. The process is a kind of violence. Mashiro just lets it happen. It makes her feel sick. Like she’s evil for wanting to see them. She throws off the helmet -
Mashiro is smiling.
Awayuki stares.
They tilt their head and lay their hand on Awayuki’s, where she’s got her hands tangled in Mashiro’s collar, knuckles against their collar bones. The suit is open, neck to pelvis. They’re wearing little more than a bra. Mashiro teases, “How forward.”
Awayuki flushes. “I don’t mean it like that.”
“Leading a girl on,” Mashiro accuses, in humor.
Awayuki lets go. Steps back. Mashiro, in turn, sinks to the floor. The star-white of their suit crumbles around them. Awayuki sinks to the floor, too. “You’re not really a girl.”
They confessed it to her years back, among the endless green and flowering shelves of her home-station’s hydroponic gardens; was that a lie, too?
“Well,” Mashiro says, “that’s true.”
They look like a girl though. They look like a human.
They have the same white hair and blue eyes they’ve always had, fair skin like it’s never seen sunlight. Pink lips. Soft breasts. In this lighting, behind the lacy porcelain of their lashes, their eyes look bright as a comet and dark as the sky through which it burns. Mashiro took an appearance like this when they met, too, when they were that dead-eyed and doll-like child, who smiled small and reserved and didn’t seem like they meant any of it. That…
Awayuki comes forward. She lays her hand on Mashiro’s neck, and feels its pulse jackrabbit under her fingertips.
“Why are you still maintaining that appearance?”
Mashiro takes a moment, but simply answers, “I don’t want to scare you.”
Like they mean it.
“You’re smiling.”
“Am I?” Mashiro blinks, but doesn’t stop smiling. “Aaa, you’re right. It’s really pathetic, right?”
“Pathetic?”
“This,” they answer. “Me.”
“I - ” don’t think so, she almost says, but stops, not because it isn’t true, but because she doesn’t want to say it. Mashiro seems to understand anyway, from the way pink rises on their face, up to their ears, and the expression on their face softs immeasurably with something close to fondness.
“I mean it.” They bring a gloved hand to cup Awayuki’s cheek. “In truth, the way I framed it earlier was misleading. This is what I do, yes, and this is what my kind does too, yes, and I’m hungry and it’s instinctual and it’s thrilling, too, and satisfying more than it’s thrilling, but it’s not like it’s something I have to do.”
Horrifying beyond words. But Awayuki can’t bring herself to stop listening.
“...I did it because I want to,” Mashiro says, calm and smiling and beyond remorseless. “And because I don’t care all that much for lives I don’t know, and like to take those which I do. I enjoy every step and every calculation, and most of all, the clean slate of a cleared ship.”
“Why are you telling me this?”
“Because I was saving you for last,” Mashiro says. “But now I don’t think I want to kill you at all. Isn’t that pathetic?”
“It’s - ”
What can she say to that?
There is something heavy in her every limb and chemical in her blood. A thick, chemical cocktail that makes her breath shallow and heart fast and limbs tremble. Like her entire body has been carbonated. She has to say something, but all she can think is: Mashiro Mashiro, Mashiro. Tar in her throat and her lungs. Like wet concrete when she tries to speak. A truth that is like lead on her tongue:
Awayuki has never been wanted this deeply.
It seems unreal that anyone would want her at all. Much less - whatever this is.
Underneath her fingertips, Mashiro’s pulse beats like the wings of a hummingbird.
“You’re nervous,” Awayuki realizes.
That pink blush deepens. Mashiro looks embarrassed. It is such an upsettingly familiar expression, no matter how rare. “I told you,” they say. “I’m so nervous I could die. You’re my best friend. I don’t want to scare you. I don’t want you to not like me.”
“I don’t,” she stops, swallows. Quietly, “I don’t think you’re pathetic.”
Mashiro closes her eyes.
“Awa,” they say. “I am going to keep you.”
In one swift, easy movement, Mashiro has her on the floor. Hard glass hits against her back, knocking air from her lungs, and she gasps sharply, eyes closing tight. The ground is cold and glossy underneath her clawing fingers. Her helmet comes off and clatters distantly, somewhere. When she opens her eyes, Mashiro is straddled above her, hair like white lace around their face, eyes comet-bright. Awayuki tries to look away, and feels her stomach drop with the view beneath her: a window into the cosmos.
Mashiro takes her jaw and makes her look back.
“I really love you,” Mashiro says. “The way you’re usually so calm, but will move heaven and earth to help someone in trouble. I love how you cry and how you smile. I really can’t get enough.”
A horrible thought occurs: “Tell me you didn’t kill any of them to see my reaction.”
“It wasn’t your fault they died,” Mashiro answers instead.
“...”
“Hey,” they say, gently. “You’re alright.”
In a way, it’s easier to just believe them. Awayuki imagines: it is nine weeks ago and none of this has happened. She and Mashiro are in the sleeping quarters. Mashiro confesses, quietly, who she is and what she’s done. Awayuki is startled, but it’s Mashiro: nothing could ever make her hate Mashiro. She trusts them more than her own self.
“You locked us in security.”
“Figured that one out, now, too?” Mashiro looks delighted, the same way they always is when someone figures something about them out without them explaining it first. “You’re right.”
“Mashiron,” she says, wounded in a way that is beyond words; Awayuki is Awayuki because Mashiro calls her Awa; Awayuki is here because Mashiro helped her to a better life; Awayuki is alive, because Mashiro likes her enough to want her to be.
“Don’t overthink it,” Mashiro says. “I already do that enough.”
“I don’t know what to do,” she says helplessly.
“Think about it like this,” Mashiro says. “Most of the things you’d want to do, I doubt I’ll indulge. So there’s no use stressing over it in the first place.”
“You still look like a human,” Awayuki says.
Mashiro repeats, “I don’t want to scare you.”’
“I want to see,” Awayuki says, even though she doesn’t really.
A pause.
The thrum of the ship around them. The white noise of a hundred computers. The frigid, freezing cold of it all. Awayuki feels her heartbeat down to her fingertips. Mashiro’s face flickers with - something.
“Well,” they say. “If that’s what you want. I’ll show you a little.”
Awayuki is struck with sudden urge to assure the other that they don’t have to show anything they don’t want. “You don’t - ”
“I knew you’d say that.” Mashiro sighs.
Their hand takes hers. They lift it to their mouth - Awayuki’s finger’s twitch, anticipate a bite, but Mashiro just opens her mouth to show sharp teeth. They don’t say Awayuki can touch them, but they don’t have to; after a moment, tentatively, Awayuki runs the pad of her index finger over the sharp, thin teeth in the other’s mouth. The texture of their gums. The warmth of their tongue. Heat flushes her face; she feels stupid. It’d be easier to be dead than this.
Awayuki’s hand is guided down Masiro’s throat, and chest, and down to their stomach where their torso splits open into a large, sharp-toothed mouth. It has no lips, and its flesh is purpled and blue.
It matches Mashiro’s eyes, Awayuki thinks, for a small, absurd moment. Her hand jolts to a stop in their stomach-mouth.
“Awa?”
Mashiro’s voice comes as a question. They tilt their head at her; it’s a curious, animal motion. Their face doesn’t show much of anything, but Awayuki could never mistake it for anything but self-consciousness; Mashiro has always been so self-conscious.
Because they were hyper-aware that they’re a mimic? Maybe. And because it’s Mashiro. But this is Mashiro. Mashiro is the mimic.
“What’ll,” Awayuki drops her hand to her side. Mashiro doesn’t catch it. “What’ll happen?”
“That depends on you,” Mashiro answers easily. “I’ll leave that last survivor here if you come easily.”
“Where?”
“I’ve been to your nest so many times,” Mashiro says. “I always returned to you. Even when I never needed to. I want to show you my nest, too.”
“Oh. Okay.”
“You’ll come?”
Awayuki looks away. Underneath them, space unfurls into an infinite drop. There is no reaching the bottom. There is not even a plummet down, just a lost, weightless anchoring in place. A hundred thousand stars burn white and blue. Awayuki, who has never been good at resisting impulses when it counts, looks back at the imposter, the alien, mimic, Mashiro, her friend, her best friend, the one who led her slowly, quietly out of the decaying hell of the person she pretended to be but never was.
She has never been wanted so sincerely.
“You said,” Awayuki swallows. “A good lie… you lied to me.”
“I lied to you,” Mashiro agrees.
“...”
She can’t say it.
Mashiro seems to understand. They always do. “I did,” they reassure, each sound like the syrup of a clementine, “but the best lies are told with truth.”