Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

early dust, year 10 post landing

For a while there, Vace really had it going for him. He was instrumental to the colony’s defenses, a real hero. Respected, powerful, needed. He had all the power and adulation he wanted. He had a girlfriend, pretty and devoted and accomplished (but not as accomplished as him) and the future mother of his children.

The future was secure. He was a hero, a commander, a leader. He’d eventually have a place on the Council itself, he would be a husband and a father. He had it made. Everything he’d ever wanted and everything he deserved, well within reach.

And then he found himself watching, stunned, as the council unanimously voted to replace Lum with – with some Stratospheric loudmouth, and nobody did a single thing to stop it. 

When he looks at Nemmie, next to him, she’s looking at Solace. She’s always looking at Solace. Solace is at the side of the Vertumnalia stage, arms folded, having a quiet conversation with Cal. They’re Marz’s offsider at Command, and almost certainly they’re out to get him. 

Solace has always made it quietly obvious that they loathe him. Nemmie tells him they were childhood friends, full of stories – her and Solace playing hide and seek, her and Solace playing sportsball, Solace making up all the best stories, Solace who is brave and clever and kind and her best friend. 

Solace who looks at Vace like he’s failed a test he didn’t know he had ever been set. He’s tried to win them over, been polite and charming, and they still look at him like he’s nothing. Worse than nothing – like he’s a failure, like they’ve stared through into the interior of his skull and judged him wanting.

Vace doesn’t need their approval. Whether that judgemental little freak likes it or not, Nemmie is his. They can try to take her from him, but she’ll choose him every time. He’s made sure of it, made sure she knows how lucky she is to be on the arm of one of the most powerful men in the colony. 

Marz can try to seize power all she likes. Sooner rather than later, the colony will realise it needs a stronger hand at the helm.

He doesn’t realise, then, that this is the beginning of the end. 

early wet, year 10 post landing

“Fine,” Vace says abruptly, “if you want to get on your knees for – for that usurper, and their useless cow-buggerer of a boyfriend–”

Nemmie flinches. She doesn’t like to feel disloyal, he knows this. Imply that she’s been unfaithful, or disloyal, and she’ll need to prove herself every damn time. 

Her expression changes, just slightly – shock and concern, and she’s looking right past him. She’s afraid of him, good–

“You don’t talk to my daughter like that,” Antecedent says pleasantly. 

“Mom,” Nemmie rakes wet hair out of her eyes, “we were just–”

“What Olivaceous was just doing,” Antecedent replies, glacial, “was apologising to you for speaking to you in that manner.”

Silence. “No,” Nemmie says eventually, “he’s not, because this conversation is over, and I’m going home.”

Thank the stars, they can have this conversation in private. Vace reaches for her hand, and she steps out of reach. “I’m going home,” Nemmie repeats, face stony, “Mom, lets go.”

Antecedent regards him for a long moment, and for a second there is something of Nemmie in her chilly gaze – it’s the same look his girlfriend gives xenos, the second before she pulls the trigger. “Of course, sweetheart,” she says, and then Anemone is walking away.

Vace tells himself she’ll come back, that she needs him. But instead, the next time he sees Nemmie is coming home to find that she’s let herself into his quarters and she’s putting everything of hers in boxes. She’s in leggings and a sports bra, and Solace is sitting on his bedroom floor helping her shut the lid on a box of uniforms. 

He stands in the doorway, wrestling with how violated he feels by the presence of relative strangers in his quarters – not just Solace, but Marz and one of Anemone’s brothers are standing in his kitchenette. 

Marz’s smile is wide and false, he knows a threat display when he sees one, and he never learned how to tell the triplets apart. This one has his hair buzzed uniformly short, and has visibly well-developed arm muscles – he almost wouldn’t look out of place in the military, except for the fact he’s wearing eyeliner, and his teal trousers and yellow-and-white shirt very clearly mark him out as a worker in the Living Quarters.

“Ah, Vace,” Nemmie’s brother says, “we’ll be out in just a moment. Anemone’s just picking up the stuff she left here.”

On cue, Nemmie emerges from their room – his room, face stony, stance canted sideways to balance a box on her hip. Solace looms behind her like a lanky shadow, dark eyes fathomless, cradling another box in their arms.

“We’re done here,” she says to the room at large, but her eyes are on him. Vace tries to summon up the right words to say that will put the world back in alignment, that will bring back what is rightfully his, but his hands close on nothing at all. Behind Nemmie, Solace stares at him with eyes like blank black pits, their lip curling slightly.

Then Nemmie walks out the door without a glance in his direction, that creepy doll-eyed fuck in her wake. Marz pushes off his counter and stalks after her, and Nemmie’s brother gives him a smile that does not reach his eyes. “Have a great afternoon,” he says, bland and cheerful, and then he’s gone too.

That night, after several rocks glasses of bootleg spirits, there’s a sharp knock at the door. She’s come back, she thought better, she’s his again–

The person standing outside his door is not Anemone. It’s a man – tall, slim of build, with curly dark hair and five-o-clock shadow both threaded with grey. He’s wearing sunglasses, even though it’s indoors and at night, and a scuffed Expeditions uniform minus armour. 

“I was hoping we could talk,” the man says conversationally. His voice is what helps Vace place him – a raspy, toneless tenor. He’s worked with Chamomile in Expeditions – the man rarely speaks, usually behind the wheel of a vehicle or fucking around with little instruments and pointing holographic grids at things, like that means anything. 

He has absolutely no idea why Chamomile would want to speak to him. “Can’t it wait until morning?” he asks, putting down glass number…well, he was never really counting, out of sight. 

Chamomile clearly mulls this over for a couple of seconds. “No,” he says, impeccably polite, “this can’t wait.” 

Vace looks down at him, frowning. “Fine,” he relents, “what is it?”

“It’s about my daughter,” Chamomile replies, and Vace frowns at him, uncomprehending. Chamomile isn’t married, has never mentioned a partner or kids at home.

Chamomile has clearly noticed the pause, or some tell in Vace’s expression, because his brows knit and his chin lifts. He’s looking at Vace like you look at someone who’s being uncharacteristically a bit thick. 

“Anemone,” he says, a little impatiently, and Vace’s guts turn to ice. 

Chamomile takes his sunglasses off and polishes them with the end of the scarf wrapped around his neck, and when he looks up at Vace his eyes are a familiar crystalline violet, albeit a deeper shade than Anemones. Now he thinks of it, Chamomile has dark hair under the fluorescent interior lights of the Heliopause, but in the bright sun his hair is a deep ruddy auburn, a red so dark it verges on brown. 

“What about her,” Vace manages, around the flood of adrenaline. He is tired, drunk, alone and in sweatpants. Quietly and without ceremony, this man has taken the upper hand before Vace realised the danger he was in.

Chamomile puts the glasses on top of his own head and rubs his eyes. “Kid,” he says, and Vace bristles.

“I’m not a kid–” he barks, and Chamomile looks him in the eye for the first time, expression patient, like he’s waiting out a toddler having a tantrum. His eyes are clear and terrible, like a spotlight or a crosshairs, and Vace is simply the subject of his weary attention.

“You are younger than my eldest child, may his dust rest easily,” Chamomile’s voice is flat, “and I shouldn’t need to tell you this, but it seems somewhere along the way you never got the memorandum that there are certain ways a man does not behave.”

Vace stares at him, mind blank. He has no clue what this man is talking about.

Chamomile eyes him speculatively for a moment. “I am going to choose to believe Anemone would not have loved an idiot,” he says pleasantly, “but I’m going to spell this out, just to make sure you and I are on the same page. I don’t care what behaviour you were raised to think acceptable, you’re going to need to pull your finger out.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Vace replies, and it comes out smooth and reassuring, the tone of voice that won over Nemmie’s other parent. He knows he’s charming enough. He can make this man leave him alone. 

There is a gravid pause. “My daughter told Anne she was afraid you would hit her,” Chamomile says evenly, “and you need to know that if you raise a hand in violence to a lover or a child, there are people in the Vertumna group who got on the Stratospheric and fucked off into space specifically to escape men like you. We don’t do that there.”

Vace’s blood freezes in his veins. Chamomile is looking at him expectantly, but it’s like he’s behind plastic or a figure on a holoscreen, like he’s not present or real. Or maybe it’s Vace that’s unreal. 

raise your hand in violence- 

men like you-

“I never – I would never have hit Nemmie,” he says, in the reasonable come-on-now tone, “she’s overreacting because we had an argument and things got a little heated. We’ll sort it out, there’s no need for…all of this.”

This man and Nemmie are not close. She’s never mentioned him, he likely doesn’t know much about her, and she’s young. He can be the reasonable one, the one dealing with an overemotional girlfriend–

“Don’t start that with me,” Chamomile doesn’t sound angry, he just sounds tired, “I trust Anne and Anemone more than that. Now. You’re going to get it together, and if anyone hears you’ve been intimidating your lovers into submission, stars forbid employing violence to get your way, or you will find yourself rotting away with no prospects and no allies. Do you understand me?”

Vace reaches for the right answer. He’s intelligent, he’s good at getting his own way, there has to be a way to turn this conversation to his advantage but he can’t find it. He’s tired, he’s hammered, and he’s beginning to think Nemmie’s not coming back. At least, not until Marz and her blank-faced attack dog get overthrown and the right people are back at the helm.

“Yes, sir,” he says, because he knows the answer to do you understand me.

Chamomile squints at him. “We don’t do that here either,” he replies, “it’s Chamomile, to you. Miles, if you think you’ve earned it. Have a good night, Olivaceous.” 

Chamomile backs up one step, then another, violet eyes cool. Now he looks at Chamomile closely, he can see the resemblance – the thick curls, the slim build, the shape of the eyes. He’s very handsome, in a strange fey way, like something from a fantasy holovid.

Whatever. It doesn’t matter. Chamomile and Anne aren’t together any more, and Nemmie never mentioned him so Vace can safely ignore him. He wonders, idly, why Anemone’s parents aren’t together any more – a wandering eye, perhaps. Antecedent might have been prettier once, more interesting, but she is neither now. Miles is tall, handsome, assertive – perhaps he’s moved on.

He shuts the door, and he picks up the glass.

glow, year 10 post landing

For a moment there, he thought he was going to get the satisfaction of watching Solace die. 

When the klaxons had sounded, Solace had been on the wall with a plasrifle slung over their shoulders, like they had been expecting this somehow. They look the part of a hero, standing on the edge of the wall with their coat tail flapping in the wind. As he watches, they discard the plasrifle with a clatter, crouch down, and swing off the edge of the wall to rappel down to the oncoming horde. 

As much as he dislikes them, and as certain as he is that they’re about to die, he’s forced to admit that they have style. It’s a pity they only ever seem to back losing dogs. 

Solace walks out, alone, and begins to speak. He hears a horrified moan from elsewhere on the wall, and realises that – speaking of losing dogs – Recalcitrance is here, whey faced, clutching Marzipan like she’s a lifeline. “Marz,” he says, “we have to go and get them, they’re on their own–”

“They’re not,” someone says coolly from Cal’s other side, and when he leans over to look Nemmie has a plasrifle held in rote-perfect form, already looking down the sight. He can hear Solace talking in the distance, the most impassioned and animated he’s ever seen them, but there’s no way this is going to work. 

They’re bargaining with the xenos, vicious and incandescent in their fury, and against every odd and everything Vace knows to be true, it works.

Vace watches the army vanish, watches Solace’s shoulders slump like they weren’t sure if it would work, watches Cal and Nemmie pull them away and out of sight, and that’s when he realises he’s fucked. 

early quiet, year 11 post landing

He doesn’t think anything of the bar being closed for a private event until he hears Nemmie laugh.

He’d assumed that Sol had expended all that time and effort luring her away from him so they could date her themselves, but he’s forced to admit it seems like Sol and Cal are honestly monogamous. The Stratos are a bunch of overly cuddly freaks, so it isn’t always easy to tell who’s involved with who, but if she was screwing them they wouldn’t see the point in hiding it either. 

Solace and Nemmie are dancing. There’s nothing romantic or classy or courtly about it – he knows Sol’s a good dancer, but they mostly seem to be spinning and swinging Nemmie around until they’re both pink in the face and laughing. While he watches, Sol sweeps her off her feet, spins her around, and dips her nearly to the floor while she howls with laughter. They straighten up, sending Nemmie’s loose mane of fiery curls everywhere, and set a giggling and exhilarated-looking Nemmie back on her feet.

There is something in the way Nemmie seems so comfortable with Solace throwing her around that sits strangely in his chest. It’s so… trusting, the complete confidence with which Nemmie allows herself to be taken off her feet and that Solace even tries. 

Vace wonders, suddenly, if she would have permitted him to handle her like that. Not in the bedroom, but so casually and so playfully. She’d been nervous and eager to please, which had pleased him at the time, but. Nemmie glows under the golden lights of the bar, flushed and smiling, and for a moment he feels physically sick with envy. 

Even when she’d chosen him over Solace, set them aside to give herself wholly to him, Solace always had something of Nemmie that was beyond his reach. 

He’s so preoccupied looking at Nemmie, Vace almost misses Solace looking at him. They’re standing on the dance floor, observing him observing what he surmises is their birthday party, backlit by the warm lights of the bar and the dancing figures of their friends.

The light is behind them, and he cannot make out their expression. It could be triumph, or contempt, or loathing, but their face is in shadow and he cannot draw any conclusions from the stillness of their posture. 

(It’s only years later that he realises it must have been pity.)

Vace turns and leaves, putting the music and laughter behind him and heading back to his silent quarters. 

mid dust, year 11 post landing

Second Security Officer is a hollow victory. There’s no real glory or significance to it, just a lot of boring interpersonal disputes, telling off children for sneaking into out-of-bounds areas, and mind-numbing amounts of paperwork.

It’s also becoming increasingly obvious that the Garrison is going to need to downsize. There’s only so many training exercises people can do before they start to lose morale, and as far as he knows the plan is to quietly begin downgrading some of the Garrison’s personnel to reservists. 

Rhett has a list of people who have already approached him about transitioning out of active duty – some of them are the expected Stratos, soft as they are, but some of them are people who he remembers as soldiers from childhood, friends of his father, people he looked up to who are now taking the first available opportunity to be something other than a soldier.

Vace can’t remember a time a soldier wasn’t the only thing he ever wanted to be. He turns up to work every morning, does his mind-numbingly unsatisfying job, and then goes home to an empty bed and a full glass. 

There are invitations to go play cards or darts or whatever, but increasingly they’re not at the Garrison anymore. They’re at Rex’s bar, which is increasingly the hub of the Vertumna colony’s after-dark socialising while the rec room at the Garrison sits dark and disused. 

Vace takes them, because there’s not really another option, and he doesn’t want to look afraid of Rex. Not that long ago, people were afraid to be seen with Rex, afraid of becoming a pariah like him and thus reluctant to even speak to him. None of them wanted to be the next person to get their arm broken.

These days, Rex’s bar is where just about everyone goes to socialise, drink, and carouse. He can’t avoid it. The Council even go there after meetings sometimes to have a few drinks, not that he wants to socialise with Marzipan or Recalcitrance or Antecedent so nobody minds if he makes excuses. 

And Rex is popular. He’s handsome, gregarious, and has friends in high places, so everyone suddenly wants a piece of him. A specific piece, usually, but it’s enough to make him welcome at every table he pulls a chair out at.

And Vace would rather die than let him get a chance to get even, so most nights he goes home and drinks alone. 

early wet, year 11 post landing.

It becomes routine. He gets up in the morning, goes to his miserable job and watches the number of people volunteering to be the first wave of reservists climb. There is a stupid amount of paperwork to exit all of them and redeploy them elsewhere. Rhett is interviewing everyone currently with the Garrison and offering them the chance to be part of the first and second groups to be downgraded and redeployed. 

Then he goes home to his empty room, or goes out and has a few drinks and finds someone to go home with. Some mornings he wakes up dry-mouthed in someone else’s bed, or with a relative stranger in his. People come back for more, which is good, he’s still got it (people still want him) but it all feels strangely unreal, like it happened to someone else.

glow, year 11 post landing

He’s reading a holonovel in one of the lounges and drinking a cup of heavily-adulterated blep tea when he hears familiar voices. He’d recognise Nemmie’s voice anywhere – at work, she used a harsher tone, but in moments of vulnerability her voice had a soft, mellifluous quality that used to be just for him.

It takes him a moment to identify the other speaker – a warm baritone, deceptively light, and then he laughs and Vace recognises Rex immediately. What are they doing wandering through the corridors together at two in the morning?

Nemmie shoves the door open with her shoulder and flicks the lights on, and for a horrifying moment he thinks Rex is going to go inside and he’s going to have to live with the knowledge they’re fucking to get back at him. 

He can see Nemmie’s face tilted up, giving Rex a terribly thoughtful look, and then he murmurs something and Nemmie’s mouth quirks in a lopsided smile and she steps in. 

Vace looks away so he doesn’t have to see them kiss, staring at the holoscreen without really seeing it. He has half a mind to go over there and start something, but if anyone hears – there are people around, Marz and Tangent are in a remote corner of the lounge watching something – it won’t be him they come to help.

A week and a half later, on the morning of New Years Eve, his eye snags on a familiar name in the list of people requesting to transfer to the reservists.

Anemone.

That night, he joins the New Years Eve festivities at Rex’s bar and drinks a few beers, and then a round of shots, and then another– 

quiet, year 12 post landing

– and when he next recalls himself the sun is past the horizon and he has someone whose name he can’t remember (Moni, or something) shoved up against the wall outside Rex’s bar with his hand up her skirt. Whoever this person is, she’s making interesting noises into his mouth, and his other hand has found a truly spectacular backside, and –

He manages to extricate himself from the makeout in time to throw up spectacularly into the gutter. There’s a dismayed noise from above him, and he hears his erstwhile hookup go “Oh, I don’t think I should go home with you, you're drunker than I thought.” 

“I’m fine,” Vace spits, wiping his mouth, but she’s already backed up a little. He gets a vague impression of deep-pink hair and a solid build. 

“No,” she replies, “you’re well fucked up. C’mon, I bet some of the bar staff are still in and we can get you cleaned up–” 

Absolutely the fuck not. “Piss off,” he says, trying to straighten up and listing unsteadily.

“You’re not that handsome that I’ll tolerate that from you,” the stranger says crossly, “take yourself home, then. Alone.”

“Wait,” he struggles for a name, “uh. Moni-”

He knows he’s fucked up immediately, because “Moni” lets out a disbelieving laugh. “Sorry, good looking,” she scowls, “but I definitely don’t fuck people who can’t even remember my name, you’re either too drunk or too much of an asshole. Which is Mor, by the way. Go home, if you’re not going to accept help cleaning yourself up.”

Time stretches awfully. He remembers throwing up again, and then he remembers Rex starting at him like he’d never seen a person throw up before, and the rest of the night comes in nightmarish flashes. 

He remembers spitting “You’re on top now,” and if Rex hears the wobble in his voice nothing changes in his expression, “with your stupid - eugh - bar, and your friends in high places, and you’re here to hrrrrgh– ” 

Rex doesn’t look like he’s gloating. He looks like he might be angry, actually – ears back, mouth pressed into a thin line, brows furrowed. He’s looking Vace full in the face. He never used to do that. 

Vace gags and braces himself for a blow – he’s leaning on a wall he’s given a foul new paint job, too busy trying to keep upright to protect centre mass – that never comes.

“What the fuck, man,” Rex sounds both frustrated and exhausted, “I can’t live like that.”

Vace throws up again. Surely there is nothing left in his stomach to bring up by now. The next he remembers, he’s trudging through the grass, and Rex is about a metre away. He’s unusually stony-faced, watching Vace the same way you watch a cornered xeno. 

“I saw you and Nemmie,” he says, before his impulse control can kick in, “you were kissing.”

“I never,” Rex replies, stiff and drifting further out of reach.

“I saw you,” Vace insists blurrily, “you walked her home, and then…” and then he looked away, so he wouldn’t have to see what happened next. 

Rex actually scowls at him. It’s strange, seeing Rex make an expression that seems actually genuine, not an airy casual facade. “I walked her home after we sat outside chatting, and then gave her a hug,” he states flatly.

There’s a pregnant pause, then Rex adds “Not that it’s any business of yours who either of us are kissing.”

It’s kind of satisfying, seeing Rex get angry. Vace wants him angry. Vace wants him to lash out, to prove that now he’s a safe enough target he and Rex aren’t that different.

You both hate me, he thinks, but Rex’s expression twists and he realises he said it aloud, too.

“I don’t hate you,” Rex ruffles his hands through his piebald shock of hair and then interlaces them behind his head, “and I don’t care to get into relationships with the sole purpose of making you feel bad. Not everything is about you.”

He doesn’t know this Rex. He knows the Rex who would shrink and avert his eyes when Vace walked past. It’s like Rex became someone else when Vace’s back was turned – there’s a strange immovable-object quality to him, like the last few years have distilled him into something more like himself, cut away the chaff to make Rex into what he was always supposed to be.

And while Rex has been distilled, Vace has diluted and dissolved like dye in water.

He vaguely remembers Rex telling him not to aspirate his own vomit before he passes out, waking up close to noon with a foul taste in his mouth, bathed in sweat and still wearing his boots. Unfortunately, he has not choked to death in his sleep. 

The next time he sees Nemmie, Chamomile is giving her a hand into an Expeditions vehicle just outside the gates. She’s in a red, black, and blue-grey Expeditions uniform that’s a little long on her – she’s had to cuff the trousers – and she’s smiling at the driver, a dark-skinned Strato with a mouthful of needle-sharp teeth. He’s smiling back.

pollen, year 12 post landing

dust, year 12 post landing

wet, year 12 post landing

His twenty-fifth birthday comes and goes. He goes out with a handful of soldiers, smiles and makes jokes, and makes the appropriately genial noises about various shitty birthday gifts that he’ll throw in the recycler as soon as he gets home.

Lum turns up late, and spends most of his time gossiping about goings on at Command. It comforts him to think Lum is probably thinking how best to undermine Marz, while working in her office. A communications manager could do a lot of damage. 

On his way back to his rooms on what was once the Heliopause, he catches a glimpse of fiery orange and turns despite himself. Nemmie is curled up on a couch with her head on Solace’s shoulder, tucked up against their side while they watch something on a shared holoscreen. Rex is slumped on her other side, one arm slung over the back of the couch, apparently asleep.

Nemmie looks up from the screen, and abruptly he feels pinned under the force of her gaze, like an insect to a board, transfixed. She was always so easy to read, before, but now her expression is as impregnable as a fortress.

More than that, he feels stupefied, rooted to the spot by her regard, like it’s a physical blade running him through, a violet harpoon through his throat. He is a prey animal in her sights. He blinks and looks away, and the spell is broken. 

Could she do that before? How did he never notice?

glow, year 12 post landing

He waits (hopes?) for the alarm klaxons to sound, but they never do.

The colony has a new tradition, now: before the first sunrise of the year, they name their dead, lifting their glasses in a toast to those who died before the Heliopause arrived to save them. 

To his surprise, Patchouli lifts her glass and names Ardence. He hasn’t heard her name in years, and he only learned what happened to her a year and a half after they landed. She’d been on the bridge crew. Her death would have been nearly instantaneous, injuries so grievous she could never have survived. She was thirty-eight years old. 

He doesn’t even think the other name, and no one else mentions it.

quiet, year 13 post landing

He’s at his desk, hung over and filling out forms to send to Medbay, when his holopalm chimes. One new message from Anemone.

The contents of his veins turn to acid. What could she possibly want–

Anemone: Good morning, I’m helping Antecedent co-ordinate an activity for the creche. Would it be possible to borrow the practice mats for the afternoon?

Co-ordinating an activity for the creche? Does she work with the Living Quarters now? He hasn’t seen her with Expeditions for a while, maybe she’s a creche worker now. She always said she’d never want to quit and be a parent, but he always thought he could talk her around…maybe someone else had. 

If he scrolls up a little, he can see the last messages they sent each other, over a year ago now. 

Anemone: I said, no. You belittle me constantly, you don’t trust my judgement, and every time I tell you you’ve hurt my feelings you accuse me of cheating. If you think my loyalty is worth so little I don’t think you deserve it.
Anemone: We’re not talking this over. I only want to hear from you if it’s an apology.

If he answers, those messages will be pushed out of sight. At the time, he’d thought she’d come crawling back to him eventually, but she never did and no matter what he did for her or how much he wanted to protect her, she’s not coming back. 

Vace begins to type out a response, and knows himself a coward.

In the afternoon, outside his office window, he sees Nemmie letting herself into the equipment shed. She’s not dressed like a creche worker – she’s in a courier’s uniform with a red and yellow jacket over the top, hair in a fraying braid. She looks well, bouncing in place as she opens the door and vanishes inside. 

He studiously ignores her struggling to remove the poofshroom mats, and ignores the hope she’ll knock on the door and ask him to help her. 

This is pathetic . Vace has no shortage of people jumping into bed with him, even though he has a reputation for being an absolute bastard, but every time he catches a glimpse of her at the edge of his vision he has to fight the urge to look. He turns towards every flicker of flame-bright hair, like the arm of a compass swingings north towards the second person who has made it absolutely clear that she doesn’t want him. 

When he next looks out the window, Cal has appeared to help, and he and Nemmie are maneuvering a mat between them. Last he knew, they weren’t speaking, but they must have mended fences – and judging by the broad smile on Cal’s face, not begrudgingly. 

Vace turns away, back to his queue of forms. Everyone at the Garrison needs a yearly physical, which means pulling the files of personnel who are coming due, flagging them to Medbay, signing off on the results and then sending them to Patchouli to process and implement any changes. 

He thought Patchouli did all the Garrison’s recordkeeping, but it turns out what she actually does is manage an endless flow of information from the Garrison to Admin and back regarding personnel, equipment and facilities and Rhett and Vace have to do far more recordkeeping than he thinks is reasonable.

There is laughter outside, voices he can’t recognise, and he forces himself not to look. That night, he goes out to the bar (Rex isn’t there, he notices – he supposes he gets days off) and tries to occupy himself with alcohol and sex but none of it really seems to permeate. 

There was a time he’d get a kick out of being desired, out of the pursuit and the conquest, but even that seems lost to him now. He watches himself take someone home like he’s in the passenger seat, watching through a windshield but without his hands on the steering wheel. 

None of it feels real, even for a moment.

pollen, year 13 post landing

He has a kitchen worker bailed up against the wall of what was once the Heliopause when there’s a scuff behind him and he pulls away from Vace to murmur “Wait, someone’s–”

Vace doesn’t care about getting caught, but evidently the slightly older man he has shoved up against the wall does care. 

There’s a pause, then a familiar voice spears him through the wreckage in his ribcage. “I don’t care what you’re doing back there,” Nemmie calls out, “I’m walking home and minding my own business.” 

Like the arm of a compass, like a flower reaching for the sun, Vace drunkenly turns towards the sound of her voice. 

One of the few memories he has of his father not poisoned by everything that happened after was sitting in his bunk with ####### reading him from old epic stories from Earth, stories of Odysseus bidding his crew tie him to the mast so he could listen to the song of the siren without throwing himself into the sea to die.

But Vace has no one to tie him fast. “Nemmie?” he calls out, his feet already carrying him towards the sound of her voice. He can see her – eerie in the glow of Vertumna’s blue sun, hair pulled into a big fluffy ponytail. She speeds up, shoulders hunching. 

“Nemmie-” he calls out again, and she stops. The distant lights of less isolate parts of the colony are behind her, catching on her mane of hair. Her mouth is flat, posture tense. 

“My name is Anemone,” Nemmie cuts him off, her back still turned to him. She’s silhouetted against the lights of the colony at lights, squaring up like she’s preparing for a fight. Vace stops short, arms uselessly at his sides.

“I told you,” Nemmie – Anemone – says into the gravid silence, “I don’t want to speak to you. I don’t even know why you’re trying, it seemed like you were having a perfectly nice evening. Go back to your friend, and let me go home.”

She turns around, hands shoved in her pockets, violet eyes colourless and eerie. Even in the dim light, this close she carries herself all wrong – strange and steady, more immovable object than unstoppable force, with a gaze like being caught in the headlights of a vehicle he is powerless to move from the path of. 

Has she changed, or does he remember her wrong? Anemone’s over a foot shorter than him, but he feels small regardless, like a prey animal caught in a scope.

There is a long pause, then Anemone backs up, one step and then another. The spell is broken, he’s no longer rooted in place, but he can’t find anything to say either.

Vace watches her go, mindless of his company until they catch up with him and he realises there’s no way to salvage the situation at all. It devolves into a fight, while the tiny figure of Anemone turns a corner and vanishes from sight.

Unfortunately, he wakes up the next morning, alone and sweaty and feeling like something crawled into his mouth and decayed there. He closes his eyes, but the image of Anemone straight-backed and severe saying My name is Anemone is seared into his eyelids. 

He gets out of bed and fumbles in his dresser for a clean uniform. There isn’t one – shit, he was meant to do laundry – so he picks up yesterdays off the floor. It passes the sniff test, barely, so he throws it on the bed and goes to wash off the previous night. 

dust, year 13 post landing

wet, year 13 post landing

“Delivery for the Garrison.”

Vace turns at his desk to look at the courier and suppresses a flinch. For a moment, he thinks its Chamomile, but then his brain catches up and he realises he’s looking at an older teenager with shoulder-length auburn hair and thick eyebrows. He’s tall and wiry, and there’s a tail switching lazily back and forth behind his legs. 

This is Anemone’s youngest brother, he realises. He has only foggy impressions of the kid – short, ruddy haired, skinny and quiet. “Delivery for the Garrison,” he repeats, as if Vace is being a bit thick, “are you Second Security Officer Olivaceous?”

He’s quite sure this kid knows exactly who he is. “I am,” Vace replies, accepting a shared holoscreen to sign, “thank you.”

The courier accepts the holoscreen and swipes it away. “Have you ever considered joining the Garrison?” Vace asks smoothly, eyeing the visible muscle bulk under the Command-blue jacket, “we can always use strong and able-bodied youngsters, and recruitment will be re-opening quite soon.” 

“I have considered it,” Anemone’s brother says cooly, eyes flickering up to Vace’s face, “but I also saw how certain members of the military behaved towards my brothers when they refused to join. That’s not a calibre of person I want to work with, sir. A lot of my age cohort feel the same way.”

“Ah,” Vace says, blinking. The kid – who can’t be older than eighteen, although he’s pretty sure Anemone’s youngest sibling is younger than that – cocks his head, tail still swishing.

He gathers himself, shaking his head. “I’m sorry to hear that,” he says, and to his own ears he sounds sincere, “I hope eventually that you see the merits of protecting the colony, ah…”

“Nimbus,” Nimbus supplies, “and trust me, we do. Have a good day, sir.”

Nimbus makes sir sound dismissive, like Vace doesn’t warrant being addressed by his name. He deposits a crate on Vace’s desk, then turns and leaves, flipping up a hood against the rain.

Vace sits back down at his desk, and a moment later there’s a knock at the door. Patchouli is lurking in the doorway, a holoeye display flickering in her red irises. “Do you have a moment? I was hoping to have a word with you,” she says.

He can’t imagine why Patchouli would want to have a word with him, so he nods, and she picks up a tea tray and walks into his office.  He’s never understood Patchouli, and he’s given up trying. Patchouli transparently hated the Heliopause, transparently hated the military, and yet she’s still here. Technically, she’s with Command, but she’s still at least partially in Garrison red, in theory because she’s still working on integrating the Heliopause’s military record-keeping with the Stratospherics, with adjustments for the new combined Vertumna Colony.

Patchouli sets down a cup in front of him, then pauses and inhales, long and loud, through her mouth. “What the fuck,” Vace stares up at her, as she picks up a teapot and fills his cup up to the brim. 

“Why do you smell of alcohol at seven forty-five in the morning, Olivaceous?” Patchouli asks, sitting down opposite him and crossing her arms. 

He remembers Patchouli as far back as his memory goes – she’s quite a bit older than him, and he remembers an aloof teenage clerk that everyone sneered at because every time they did drills involving lots of noise or chaos Patchouli would end up weeping and whey-faced on the floor.  Botched enhancement, he’d heard, some attempt to make a super-scout with perfect recall that didn’t go as planned.

“That’s none of your fucking business,” Vace says shortly, turning his attention back to his holoscreen in a clear dismissal.

Patchouli is silent. She knows her place, he guesses, managing endless forms and requisitions while everyone else does something more interesting. Someone has to do it, and it’s what she’s good for. Allegedly, there are people who like being around her, but it’s hard to see why an unsmiling paper-pusher would be a remotely desirable friend.

“It is my fucking business,” Patchouli says carefully, “when I have been covering for your fuckups, Vace. You have been getting increasingly sloppy. Everyone makes mistakes, but you blow up when anyone pulls you up, so I just correct your work before I process it.”

Patchouli allows that statement to sit for a moment, then rakes her fringe off her face with one hand. He can see a few glints of silver in her hairline -- she's close to a decade older than him. “But I am not going to do that anymore, because the Garrison no longer warrants an in-house administrator and I am moving to Command. So you need to get your shit together, or you are going to get fired.” 

“I don’t have to take this from you, Patchouli,” Vace growls, voice rising, “I don’t tell you how to do your job.”

She flinches a little. Good, Vace thinks savagely, still staring at his holoscreen without really seeing it. 

“Perhaps not,” Patchouli inclines her head, “but the next person to pull you up on this will be Rhett, and he might not give you the chance to improve. You are an unpleasant man with a foul temper who takes his frustrations out on others, but you made up for it with competence, at least. If you are not competent, there will be no use for you.”

Vace turns to look at her. Patchouli stares back, her multitude of facial piercings glinting under the fluorescents. She’s afraid of him, but not afraid enough to hold her tongue. “It would be a tragic waste to see you end up a drunk with a reputation for violence and irresponsibility,” she shrugs, “I believe you can be more. If you would believe it, I do not care to see you wash out.” 

“Get the fuck out of my office,” Vace seethes, and Patchouli rises to her feet. She’s watching his face like a hawk, watching for the blow or the explosion, and there’s satisfaction in knowing she fears him.

Patchouli picks up the tea tray, leaving Vace with a full cup. Hers, she realises, has remained empty. “It would be a shame,” she says cooly, “for you to turn out like–”

He realises what – who – she is about to say next, and blood roars in his ears. “Don’t finish that sentence,” he growls, rising to his feet, “if you know what’s good for you.”

You could hear a pin drop in the silence that follows. He hears Patchouli’s mouth shut hard enough that her teeth audibly snap together. She looks at him, transparently disappointed and contemptuous, and then she turns on her heel and walks out. He listens to her ridiculous boots clomp down the corridor and out of earshot.

Vace stands behind his desk, breathing heavily and listening to his own heart hammering. He becomes aware, abruptly, that he is bathed in fear-sweat and his hands are shaking. 

The next thing he knows, there is the sound of smashing ceramic and the wreckage of the ceramic cup full of tea is scattered against the opposite wall, shards tinkling against the concrete floor. 

Vace blinks, looking down at his hands, which don’t feel particularly connected to his body right now. He’s not actually completely sure that they’re his hands, or if he’s looking through someone else’s eyes at a body not his own. He feels, distantly, a wave of revulsion at this...foul, sweat-soaked sack of meat, at its shaking hands and ringing ears. 

That night, he goes to piss in the bar bathroom, looks up at his reflection in the mirror, and winces a little. Maybe it’s the dim lighting, but he looks like hammered shit.  

He’s lost a lot of weight, the planes of his face knife-sharp and alien like he’s a fucking Gardener, corded muscle standing out on his arms. There are deep shadows under his eyes, which are incredibly bloodshot. There is a hot and unexpected rush of shame. 

– a shame for you to turn out like –  

– fucked off into space specifically to escape men like you – 

– not a calibre of person I want to work with, sir –

Has he really sunk so fucking low? He used to be someone, and here he is, destroying his liver and becoming exactly what he was afraid of. Drunk, dissolute, increasingly irrelevant, just like–

He doesn’t think the name. Only a handful of people turned up for the funeral, because by that point nobody wanted to be seen with–

That will be him. The only people who come to see his body loaded into the recycler will be the people who felt like they had to be there–

Vace washes his hands, heads back out into the bar, and makes for the water stations. Lum is standing there, filling up a glass. He looks up, notices Vace and lifts his eyebrows slightly.

He hasn’t seen much of Lum for a while. There was a while there where he was convinced Lum was undermining Marz’s office from within, but he’s not so sure about that now. Lum seems much happier now than he ever did as Governor – he has a better reputation, for one, as apparently he’s a reasonably effective communications manager. 

“Vace,” Lum says genially, “it’s been a while. How’ve you been?”

Vace contemplates telling the truth for a long moment. “It’s been alright,” he says, “Garrison’s keeping me busy. How’s Command?”

“Well, the office is expanding to include Patchouli,” Lum shrugs, “which is probably for the best, because Marz says we’re likely to lose Sol for a few months but possibly longer so they can have a baby.”

Vace opens his mouth to ask wait, Solace can bear children and since when did you call that dead-eyed spook Sol and neither of those come out. “You’re going to have to catch me up,” he says instead, “we should find a table.”

Lum looks apologetic. “Sorry, man,” he says, “I’m actually here on a date. Another time?”

“A date,” Vace says, like he’s never heard the word before. He likes to think that he and Lum had been personal friends, but Lum had never even mentioned a desire for a romantic relationship. But now he thinks of it, during the years where Lum might have been settling down, he’d been in charge of a colony that increasingly hated him. 

“Has your head been under a rock, man,” Lum looks a little amused, filling up a second glass, “I’ve been seeing someone for the last six months. Now, if you’ll excuse me.”

Vace watches him walk over to a table and sit down next to someone with powder-blue hair, giving them a genuine smile and sliding them the other glass. What the hell. He can’t do this anymore. For a moment, Vace’s future is laid out in front of him – he washes out as Second Security Officer and ends up dying a premature and undignified death. Nobody who comes to his funeral actually wants to be there, if they’re there at all. That’s if he gets a funeral at all, and doesn’t end up carrion outside the walls.

Vace can fix this. He used to be good at doing and saying the right things, and just because the rules have changed doesn’t mean he can’t learn to play the game. 

He knows what he has to do. 

glow, year 13 post landing

He agrees to take the overnight security shift, so his men can enjoy Rex’s stupid little party. Rhett arranges the shift change so Vace can watch the sunrise if he wants to, but he won’t. He hates the twee little tradition of the colony sitting outside to watch the sunrise together, like happy families on a massive scale.

Rex’s bar closes for the day, and when he walks past on his way to the kitchens for lunch he can hear people moving around inside, putting up decorations. He glances in a window to see Solace adjusting a length of fabric, their eyes moving to meet his. 

Solace’s unblinking eyes weigh him up, dark and fathomless, lips parted. They say nothing, and their expression gives no indication as to what their reaction might be. After a long moment, they just…look away, dismissing him entirely. 

He’s patrolling when people start filtering into the bar, some of them in ridiculous and outlandish outfits – someone started up the idea of dressing to a vague theme of nature, so as he watches Antecedent and Chamomile walk past, Antecedent in a floaty Pollen-pink chiffon dress and Chamomile in the ochre and russet of Dust. 

Half a minute later, he spots Marz, in a crown of that local blue-purple crystal and a black floor-length gown with a train. She’s arm and arm with Anemone, in a shimmering gold dress and with gold tinsel woven through her hair, followed by Sol and Cal covered in swirls of glowing paint. They all look ridiculous, like they’re dressing up in honour of a planet that wanted them all dead.

Still, his eyes track the gleaming figure of Anemone until she vanishes inside the building. 

–

It’s a quiet evening. Vace hears a few reports of drunk and disorderly behaviour, and catches a few kids sneaking out past the colony boundary, but it’s a long and boring shift. He walks past Patch and that short chubby girl from Engineering passing a joint back and forth, and feels Patch’s eyes follow him past the bar and out of sight.

In the distance, he hears a surge of noise from the bar, resolving in SEVEN, SIX, FIVE, FOUR, and he keeps walking.

quiet, year 14 post landing.

Somewhere in the holoarchives of the Heliopause, he knows, there’s a photograph of his parents wedding. His father is in uniform, straight backed and firm-jawed, entirely unlike the memories Vace has of– of his father, later in life. Next to him, a woman with dark hair streaked heavily with blonde curling over her shoulders, solemn-faced in her white wedding dress. 

Vace knows, because he’s not stupid and he can do basic addition and subtraction, that Ardence is already pregnant with him in this photo, although the cut of the dress conceals the bump. It doesn’t suit her, a frothy confection that only serves to highlight the severity of her face even at nineteen years old. 

He only ever saw Ardence from a distance, in trousers and with her hair cropped short, severe and unsmiling. She was gone before he could remember her terribly well, although after E- after his father died, Vace went through the files on his holopalm and found a picture of Ardence lying down on the floor of a room in the family barracks. She’s curled around a chubby-cheeked infant like a question mark, smiling adoringly down at the tiny face he knows logically is his own.

Did she ever think of him, after she walked out the door and out of his life? He’s sure she knew who he was, but she never approached him.

At the end of his shift, he clocks back in and oversees the shift change. When Rhett claps him on the back and tells him to go and enjoy the first sunrise. Vace feigns a smile, assures Rhett that he will, and heads off in the direction of the Heliopause to go to bed.

He veers around the bar – there’s a low wall, mainly because there used to be a bit of a drop there, and after a few people rolled their ankles during Glow someone built a hip-high barrier – easily climbed over, but it means people think twice about running around blindly in the dark.

There’s a dark shape on the wall, two people sitting side-by-side, and as he comes closer the taller of the two scrunches down and puts an arm around the shorter. He hears murmured voices, a soft laugh, and as he comes closer he hears a familiar voice say “-being around you guys, you’re pretty cool.”

Anemone. The other figure, from the fluffy hair and the height, is probably Nimbus. He keeps walking, hearing Nimbus murmur something that cuts off with a sharp hsst, which a moment later he realises is directed at him, and a moment after that he sees Anemone’s head turn. 

The light is behind her and Nimbus, so he can only really see one eye and the flat line of her mouth. Nimbus is slowly straightening up, shoulders squaring. “Nimbus,” Anemone says, clearly exasperated, “come off it.”

“If you think so,” Nimbus replies. He sounds…unconvinced.

This is his chance, he realises. Anemone is alone, apart from her kid brother, and he suspects she’s about to tell Nimbus to leave.

“Can we talk,” he says, and it’s supposed to be a question but it comes out sounding like…he doesn’t know what it sounds like.

Nimbus and Anemone exchange glances, then Nimbus swings his legs over the wall and stands up on the other side, giving Vace a look of glacial teenaged contempt over Anemone’s head before vanishing off, towards the bar. 

Vace waits, leaning up against the wall a metre or so from her. Anemone always used to hate silence, would work to fill it with chatter, but now she’s silent too, looking not at him but at the cavernous hole in the wall that used to separate the colony from the world outside. Light catches on the irregular texture of the scales built up on her jaw, on her arms and hands from catching herself on them. 

“I’m sorry,” he says, smooth and polished. This is the game now, and if he knows the rules he can still win.

Anemone doesn’t even look at him. Her shoulders slump, just the smallest amount. “Do you know what you’re actually apologising for,” she asks, “or is it just what you’re supposed to do?”

I’m apologising because it’s the only way I can see to unfuck my life instead of ending up like– “I fucked it up with you,” he replies. His shoulders want to go up around his ears, like when he was a child getting shouted at for some slight or misstep he didn’t understand.

“You did,” Anemone says tiredly, “I just – Vace, I don’t know if you’re apologising because you actually mean it, or because you think it’ll get you the result you want?”

Does it matter if he means it? It only matters if people think he means it, but Anemone seems to draw a distinction, and he wants to know what it is suddenly and powerfully. She’s not the person he knew, the person he planned a life with, and if he knows who she is maybe, just maybe, he can regain what he lost.

“What difference does it make?”

The question hangs in the air, and Anemone turns to look at him finally. The light catches on holographic glitter in the corner of her eye, over her cupids bow, smeared over the scales irregularly pockmarking her sternum in clusters.

“Every possible difference,” she growls, glowering at him, “in that I don’t want it if you’re just saying it.”

How is he supposed to– “Would you have me grovel–” Vace starts, because that would be far further than his pride would take, and Anemone makes a frustrated gesture, looking up at the sky as if asking whatever god is listening to get a load of this guy.

“Shut the fuck up!” she shouts, sharp and explosive and startling. If anything, she looks a little surprised by it, too.

Anemone has never raised her voice like that to him before, and before he can tell her not to speak to him like that she’s talking again, the angriest he’s ever seen her. 

“I don’t want fuck all from you,” she ploughs onwards, like an incoming fist, “and I especially don’t want an apology you don’t mean. You could grovel on your fucking knees and if you didn’t understand why I can’t forgive you there’s no point.” 

Vace thought he had a path back to a place at the table – repentance, contrition, swallow it all until he’s somebody again. She can’t just say no. 

This is not how he thought this would go. He had a plan, and this wasn’t part of it. If he acts contrite, says the right things, that’s the way it’s always worked. He can claw his way back up, if he just learns the new rules by which the game is played. He apologises, he licks his wounds, he – but she doesn’t want the apology.

“I don’t understand what I could possibly do to convince you,” he growls, forcing himself to look away from her and out at the colony, “you were the most precious and important thing to me.”

“That’s it, though,” Anemone says quietly, “I was a thing. A pretty trophy that made you look good, Vace, you didn’t actually want me. ”

He did, he did want her, he wanted the future he envisaged with Nemmie as his wife and the mother of his children. He could have been somebody with something to protect.

“I loved you,” he retorts, not entirely voluntarily. When he turns his head to look at her out of the corner of his eye, she’s opened her mouth to reply and he watches her hesitate, biting her lip.

Anemone looks at him, gaze frank and appraising, and he cannot shake the feeling that he’s caught in a plasrifle sight. “I think…” 

She trails off, frowning, clearly trying to put her thoughts in order. He used to know what she thought, could play on it, and it’s strange looking at her and having no clue what she’s thinking. 

How much can one person change, in three years? 

Vace knows the answer already. He knows how far he’s slipped.

“I think you thought you did,” Anemone says finally, “Vace, if you’d actually loved me you would never have needed to – to make me afraid of you so I’d be what you wanted. I would have been what you wanted already.”

“You are,” Vace manages with great difficulty, turning away so he doesn’t have to look at her, “all I ever wanted.” Fierce, beautiful, accomplished – everything he could possibly want in the mother of his children.

But as he says it he realises it might not be true. This might be the real Anemone, this person in front of him, and if that’s true then he knew someone else. She is bright and glittering, not in the way of a jewel but in the way sunlight catches on a knife edge. 

He can’t win in this situation. There’s no pathway out of this conversation where he gets what he wants, and he’s so tired. “I can’t,” he pauses, “you can’t hate me.”

“I don’t hate you,” Anemone replies immediately, “but it’s been three years, and you haven’t learned anything about why I broke up with you.”

There hadn’t been anything to learn. Solace had hated him, and had done everything they could to sabotage him. 

Hadn’t there?

Vace weighs up whether he wants to ask the question, and decides he has nothing else to lose. “Why did we break up, then?”

The question hangs in the air. Vace can’t bring himself to look at her. Silence was his tool, once – she’d always race to fill it, but some time in the last three years Anemone became comfortable with silence. He feels the urge to cross his arms, to jiggle his leg like a child at the dinner table waiting to be released, and fights it down.

“Vace,” Anemone says, not unkindly, “you made me miserable. You were volatile, distant, and I’m pretty sure most of the times we had sex you were checked out.”

He opens his mouth to say no, I wasn’t, but…was he? When he thinks about it, can he remember much of anything other than the satisfaction of her crawling back to him and her willingness to please.

“I was loyal to you,” Anemone continues, “I defended you to my friends, and in return all I got was you accusing me of cheating and trying to tell me who to hang out with and how to act.”

Vace reaches for a rebuttal and finds he has none. I wanted to protect you. I wanted to keep you safe. None of it feels remotely true. There’s no rancour in Anemone’s tone – she sounds calm, matter of fact.

“You know,” Anemone says into the silence that follows, “I think you never actually let me in?”

He’s not looking at her, but he can feel the spotlight laser-sight force of her gaze on him anyway. She’s…right. He can’t dismiss this as hysteria or foolishness, because Anemone has struck true. He never confided in her about – about his father, about his mother, about Rex. Not that he ever confided in anyone, but it occurs to him that she might have liked him to.

And what would have happened if he had? She would have known everything. Would have known his own mother left and did not look back, would have known that he was a small shitty kid desperate for even a scrap of approval. And then she would have walked, because everybody walks.

(A small voice, easily ignored said she walked anyway, at least then you would have told someone. Someone would have known.)

“I really am sorry,” Vace says finally, and finds he means it, “but I don’t…it is what I’m supposed to do. So I can get on with my life without looking over my shoulder waiting for one of you to get your own back.”

There’s a pause, then Anemone makes a noise that at first he thinks might be distress, but when he turns to look at her she’s smothering a laugh behind one hand, eyes glittering ruefully.

“What,” he barks, giving her a look of genuine consternation, and Anemone glances back at him, eyes crinkling.

“Vace,” she smiles, and his heart seizes irrationally in his chest, “that’s a shitty way to live, not least because it’s not even true. You can’t live your whole life hurting each other, at some point you have to decide to stop.”

You sound like Rex, Vace thinks, boosting himself up onto the wall and following Anemone’s gaze to the yawing hole in what used to be the Colony’s wall. Out of the corner of his eye, he sees Anemone flip open her holopalm, tap out a couple of messages with a soft snort, then close it.

“I’m going back inside,” Anemone says, with a genuinely friendly smile that makes his insides do upsetting things, swinging her legs over the wall and picking up her discarded shoes.

Vace turns to face her – he needs to stretch his legs out so his knees don’t wind up around his chest. He’s not built to the right scale for anything here. Anemone is over a foot shorter than him, and as far as he can tell she’s not remarkably short. The Heliopause was cramped, but it was cramped for everyone. Here, everything is just a little too small for him.

There’s nothing for him here, and he’s tired and he wants to go home. Not to his quarters, but back to the Heliopause, back to space. He belonged there, he knew how to survive there. He doesn’t understand how to survive this. 

Anemone steps forward and then she’s touching him, one hand cool against the side of his jaw and tipping his face up. The light of the bar is behind her, her face in shadow, and he can only get the vaguest possible idea of her expression. The distant light catches on her eyes, a hyperreal and terrible shade of violet, and on the flakes of gold glitter on her skin and the strands of tinsel in her hair. She's terrible, glorious as an angel and vicious as a knife.

“Come inside with me,” Anemone says suddenly, “it’s not too late. If you don’t want to be this kind of person, be someone else. I’m someone else.”

For a moment, Vace considers it. But everyone in that room despises him, and he thought he had a plan and he doesn’t even have that. There isn’t a version of the story where he follows Anemone back to the bar and gets the freedom of being someone else. He’ll always be Vace. 

He closes a hand around her wrist and pulls her hand away. “No,” he says, bland and colourless, “it’s far too late.”

Anemone’s mouth flattens, just a little. For a moment, he thinks she might argue, and he’s very afraid he’ll just…cave. 

But she shakes off his hand and turns away, towards the bar. Vace swings his legs back over the wall and tilts his face up towards the wormhole. 

The last time he felt like he actually belonged anywhere, like he knew who he was with any certainty, was up there in space. He finds himself missing it furiously often, like the minute he landed on this shitty planet was the minute his life got set on a path where he could never actually amount to anything at all.

Vace sits there, on the wall, staring up at the wormhole for a few more minutes, then gets up and goes home to stand in the shower with the lights off until the pads of his fingers start to wrinkle.

He gets out a glass and a bottle out of habit, then unbidden he remembers his gaunt and sallow reflection in the bathroom mirror at the bar. He’d looked just like–

Vace walks through into his kitchenette and pours the remaining contents down the drain, almost on autopilot. This much is within his power: it will not be his corpse loaded into the recycler with the only people there those who felt obliged to watch him go. He will not be carrion outside the walls, for xenofauna to feast on. 

Standing along in his kitchenette pouring spirits down the sink with no one to witness it, Vace doesn’t want to live exactly, but he doesn’t want to die the same death his father did. 

Chapter Text

when i ran out of thread, i couldn’t let go
but that’s not sewing that’s just poking holes
and it’s a strange breed, a different kind of creature
looks for love through the eye of a needle
but the creed of the seamstress is
that you’re pretty in pieces.

dessa, “seamstress”

quiet, year 14 post landing

What happens next is awful. Vace is smart enough to know the trap he’s in, but that doesn’t make it any easier.

Withdrawal. It’s not just the physical symptoms, which are awful – he’s sweaty and jumpy and his stomach rebels so violently he ends up calling off work for the first time that he can remember. 

It’s that he’s now experiencing his life without being able to blunt anything at the edges. More than once, he comes face to face with the bottom of a bottle again and has to go through the whole ordeal of his sweaty, disgusting body rebelling against his attempts to stop self-destructing once more. 

Rhett pulls him aside one morning. “I’m going to have to write you up,” he says without preamble, “you put someone in Medbay last night, Vace.”

“They were out of bounds,” Vace replies, feeling once again like he’s behind plastic. 

It would have been the right thing to say, once. “Your job is to protect people,” Rhett sounds more tired than angry, “and dislocating someone’s shoulder is frankly disproportionate. This isn’t the first time someone has complained about your use of force.” 

“It won’t happen again, sir,” Vace knows his place. He knows the script.

Rhett rubs his eyes. “You’re going to need to apologise.”

“I’m sorry, sir.”

“No,” Rhett gives him a funny look, “to the person you injured. Once they’re out of Medbay. I’m taking you off patrols for a few weeks, it’s probably for the best that you keep out of sight. And we have administration to catch up on, or I’m going to have to try to convince Command to give us back Patchouli part-time.”

Ugh. Right. There are nearly constant timesheets and requisition forms and medical forms and leave forms and incident reports, and it used to be that Patchouli would whisk them away and he’d never have to think about them again, but now he has to make sure everything gets filed and tagged. 

Patchouli left behind a remarkably sensible system, but it’s still so much time. He doesn’t hate it as much as he expects, but it never ends, and nobody gives a shit. Except that if it doesn’t get done, things they need don’t happen, so Vace has to give a shit. 

There’s a glimmer of satisfaction in it, though. He didn’t expect that.

dust, year 14 post landing

He’s walking back to his quarters after a particularly awful night shift, when he hears people talking softly and recognises the voices. Anemone and Rex are in one of the lounges, sitting in a pile of cushions with their backs to him.

Anemone murmurs something, her tone frustrated, and he hears Rex laugh softly. “That’s not a failing,” Rex says, “I don’t think you get to entirely accept the blame here.”

Another frustrated-sounding mumble, and Rex laughs. “Didn’t we have fun, though?” he replies, and Anemone laughs as well. 

Whatever this is, he doesn’t want to know about it. He turns around, and he takes the long way home. 

pollen, year 15 post landing

The invitations to go out for drinks have dried up. But the longer time goes on, the less he finds he likes the people he used to spend time with, and many of them have drifted away. They go where the power and the relevance is, and Vace used to be at the top of the heap, but these days he wonders if any of them actually liked him or if they liked being on the winning side.

One evening, he walks out to the shrine to the dead outside the colony wall, carrying a dusty bottle he found in the back of his kitchenette cupboard in a moment of weakness. He won’t give himself the opportunity to drink himself into a stupor a second time.

Vace rounds a corner, and a band of dim blue sunlight illuminates Solace, standing in front of the memorial. They look like a statue, head bowed over something in their hands. 

“You would have been twenty-five tomorrow,” Solace says into the silence, “I know it’s like any day, but I can’t forget. It’s not fair. You should have lived to see all this. You should have come to our wedding last year. You should be teasing me and Cal about all of this, I should be asking you for advice–”

Their voice cracks. “You should be here.”

Solace bends down and places something at the memorial, then pauses and wipes their eyes. Vace hears them inhale wetly, then they turn and spot him. 

For a moment, Solace looks like a real human being, shoulders slumped and eyes like raw wounds. Light catches briefly on damp eyelashes and dark smudges of eye makeup, and there is something awful and exposed in their expression, like torn flesh giving way to bone.

It’s strange seeing their usual expression of glacial calm reassert itself in real time. It’s like watching someone do a magic trick in slow motion – they draw themselves up, their face falling into studied neutrality except for the eyes, which bore like a plascutter right through him and out the back of his head. 

Rationally he knows that Solace is still teary, but the hairs on his arms and the back of his neck stand up, and his heart speeds. Danger, danger. They move with the efficient grace of a predator, taking a step towards him and then another.

Vace wonders sometimes if their friends know what they’ve invited into their mist. There is something deeply uncanny about Solace, like their time dealing with the Gardeners made them alien, a wild animal who has convinced everyone that it’s safe to let them lie down at the colony’s hearth. 

They’re Marz’s sleek and dangerous offsider, and he knows Anemone loves them, and he can’t understand why. Solace sets his teeth on edge, silvery and strange, and there is something terribly alien about the knowing in their dark eyes.

Solace walks past him without acknowledging him at all, Command-blue stole trailing in their wake, and vanishes from sight. They’re almost silent on their feet.

Vace waits until he’s very sure they’re gone, then approaches the memorial. It’s a chunk of what was once the colony’s wall, painted with names and adorned with tokens that everyone knows get swept into the recycler after a month or two but everyone insists on leaving anyway.

The latest offering is a single, flawless yellow bloom, tucked gently in between a stuffed animal and an envelope. The petals are smooth and unblemished, luminous in the dark, and Vace fights down the petty urge to bruise one.

Who, he wonders, had meant that much to Solace? Who had warranted that singular, perfect bloom, gleaming in dim blue sunlight? It’s not Geranium, because Solace had said “twenty-five today", so it's someone only a little older than Sol themselves.

It doesn’t matter. He’ll never know. Vace pushes the thought from his mind, and digs in his bag for the bottle. 

He doesn’t know how to do this. Is he supposed to talk? What is there to say?

The pop as he uncorks the bottle seems deafeningly loud, as does the stream of liquid hitting soil as Vace pours most of a bottle into the uncaring dirt. He leaves the empty bottle on the pile of offerings, then treks back to the colony without uttering a word.

wet, year 15 post landing

Anemone: hey
Olivaceous: What
Anemone: hb 🎂 
Olivaceous: Thanks.

Vace realises, belatedly, that it is indeed his birthday. Nobody, him included, had done anything to mark the occasion. 

Except Anemone, evidently. There is a strange and uneasy truce between the two of them. Somehow, despite everything, Anemone is one of the few people that actually seems to see him. It’s like New Years Eve nearly two years ago cracked something open, something that feels like a raw wound and a little like a relief.

One morning, he’s sitting in one of the lounges reading the colony’s news feed when Anemone and Nomi walk in, talking excitedly in hushed tones. Nomi is bouncing excitedly, gesticulating wildly while Anemone interjects periodically with an indulgent smile on her face. 

Much to the bemusement of the handful of others in the lounge, Nomi and Anemone section off a corner of the room and begin…well, he can’t tell what they’re doing exactly. Flailing around, it looks like.

Then Anemone ducks a slow-mo swipe, and says “See what I mean about leaving your torso wide open,” poking Nomi in the stomach. Nomi giggles, batting Anemone’s hands away.

“I get it,” Nomi says, “so someone competent would cover their middle, but – he’s wearing body armour, would that change things?”

Anemone looks thoughtful. “Is this fancy sci-fi body armour, or stuff that actually exists?”

Nomi pauses, bouncing restlessly on their feet. “Umm, lets say the stuff that actually exists?”

“A point blank strike with a plasgun would still probably…how hurt is this guy allowed to get?”

“No major broken bones, I think! Bruises and surface wounds are alright…”

Anemone frowns for a moment, then turns and waves at Vace. Stupidly, he lifts his head, gaze swinging towards her like a magnet to true north.

Nomi’s expression goes from thoughtful to alarmed. “Anemone,” they hiss, “what–” 

“Vace,” Anemone seems absolutely unbothered by Nomi clutching at her arm, “Getting shot in the ribs by a plasgun, through body armour – that’d do something pretty nasty to you, right?”

Vace actually knows this, although fuck knows why Anemone is asking. “At close range, not necessarily dead on?” 

Anemone nods. “At best,” he says, falling back on rote learning when he doesn’t know what the fuck else to do, “bruised ribs, probably a serious burn from the heat, if it was at an angle.” 

As he watches, Anemone turns to Nomi and says, “Good enough?”

Nomi frowns at Vace for a long moment. It doesn’t sit right with him, seeing Nomi look at him so frankly. He barely paid attention to them before – they were Rex’s stupid and frivolous offsider, always squeaking and mumbling and looking down at the floor. 

They’re not looking at the floor now. They’re looking him fully and fearlessly in the face. It figures that while everyone else has changed almost beyond recognition, Nomi will have changed too. He’d never taken much notice of them, and it’s deeply disconcerting to realise for the first time that Nomi has an oddly solemn face, with straight dark brows in a shade he guesses might be pink or purple or maroon. He doesn’t remember their natural hair colour, although surely he’s seen it.

“I can work with that,” Nomi says to Anemone, still looking at Vace, “that works. So..”

Anemone checks something on her holopalm, then says, “So, the rib shot leaves him open to get a plascutter in…it’s not clear, but it sounds fatal? Can you show me what you were thinking?”

Vace turns back to the news feed. There’s a photo of Solace and Cal smiling down at an infant wrapped in a green and blue blanket, cradled in Cal’s arms. Cal is beaming at the camera, shining with pride, and Solace is looking down at the child, a soft smile tugging at the edges of their mouth.

He is reminded, unbidden, of that photo of Ardence smiling, looking at the baby. Looking at him. His skin feels hot, and his stomach turns.

At the edge of his awareness, he hears Anemone laugh. “Brutal! I didn’t know you had it in you!”

Nomi giggles, while Anemone collapses dramatically to the floor. “Sooooo dead,” she says, sticking her tongue out for good measure, “there’s no surviving that.”

“Thanks for the help,” Nomi grins, sticking out a hand to help Anemone to her feet. Anemone takes it, then hooks an ankle around Nomi’s knee and pulls their legs out from underneath them, sending them both into a giggling heap on the floor.

He didn’t realise that they were friends. The Anemone he knew would never have been friends with someone like Nomi, but here they both are, collapsed on the floor and clutching each other and cackling. 

It’s been five years. Their relationship has been over for longer than it ever lasted, but every time he notices the changes the years have wrought in Anemone he feels strangely betrayed, like there is a small childish voice crying out but you were different when you were mine, how could you change?

And she is different. Last year, he hadn’t recognised her, because she’d cut her hair – not cut, shorn, her vivid red-gold braid shaved down to a couple of inches at the top and back and nearly to the skin everywhere else. She hadn’t kept it that short for long, but long enough for him to run into her and take a minute to recognise her without hair down to her ass. 

It had been her one concession to vanity, that hair. Anemone had worn uniforms or gym clothes, and although she’d owned makeup he’d seldom seen her take the time to look into the mirror and curse and complain that she felt like a clown.

But she had been so careful with her hair – there had been this whole laborious ritual of washing and carefully squeezing out the water with an old t-shirt and letting it dry in a vibrant glossy tumble down her back and over her shoulders before braiding it. He’d hated it, it has been time Anemone had stubbornly insisted on being truly her own. 

These days, Anemone never wears uniform because she’s not with the Garrison any more, and hasn’t been for years. She’s in a tank top and cargo pants, the ends of her jaw-length shock of hair dyed purple, almost unrecognisable. 

Be someone else, she had said, I’m someone else. And Anemone very clearly is someone else, welcomed back into the fold like she’d never been on the other side of the yawing divide between Strato and Helio.

Nomi is watching him out of the corner of their eye, in exactly the same way he’s seen soldiers watched a caged xeno that might lash out at any moment. It should feel good that they still fear him, but it just feels flat. 

glow, year 15 post landing

“Psst. Psst.”

Vace glances up at the speaker, frowning. “Is there a problem?” he asks, squinting into the gloom.

“Come here,” the voice says, “I want to talk to you.”

He squints, and the figure resolves into one he recognises. “Amp, I’m working,” Vace grumbles, “unless you have a security issue.”

Amphetamine pushes off the wall and takes a few steps towards Vace. He served with Amp in the Garrison – Amp is still with the Garrison, although he’s aware that his position there is on thin ice. 

Amp served the colony in the war against the xenos, but he’s obviously not interested in keeping the peace, and it shows. He doesn’t respect Rhett, views the Stratospheric denizens with thinly veiled contempt.

“This whole fucking place is a security issue,” Amp says, “we’re just sitting here, waiting for the Gardeners to deem us a failed experiment.”

“Are you suggesting another coup?” Vace asks, through a sheet of plexiglass. Amp is close enough to touch, but he’s abruptly convinced that if he tries, his hand will hit some invisible barrier, or pass through Amp like he’s smoke. Or like Vace himself is smoke, substanceless and unreal. 

Amp shrugs. “Of course not. You think this place has the spine for a real leader? Most of them would rather play happy families with a bunch of xenos,” he says bitterly, “I don’t want to exist on someone else’s grace, and I’m not the only one.”

“You,” Amp steps in closer, and Vace can feel the other man’s breath against his jaw, “are wasted here. A group of us are planning to get out. Take what we need and go.”

And it would be so easy to play the part expected of him. To say yes. To be the leader and the hero Amphetamine desires, in more ways than one, judging from how close he’s standing.  And he wants, with sudden sickening certainty, to be desired again. To vanish into the jungle, to get out and far away from his failures, to leave this shithole behind. 

But Vace is not a fool. The Gardeners are more numerous, more powerful, and there’s absolutely no way they have enough people and can take enough to survive in the long term. Any attempt by a small group to strike out on their own can only end one way.

“We need you,” Amp says earnestly, one hand coming up to rest on his chest. He can’t remember the last time anyone touched him. He wants it to badly, to be desired, to be important, to be needed–

The wave of revulsion is sudden and immediate. He wants to rip his own skin off. He does not want Amphetamine to be touching him. He doesn’t want anything to be touching him. He barely wants to physically exist, in the sweaty sack of meat and bone that he used to take pride in but now can barely look at for reasons he can’t explain. He keeps himself in good condition – better, these days, now that he no longer drinks – but his sweating palms and hammering heart disgust him.

Vace wants to shove Amp away, but that would raise questions he does not want to answer, so instead he steps backwards and says, “You’re going to get yourself killed.” 

“Not with you on my side,” Amp purrs, more like a man trying to wheedle someone into bed than someone suggesting running away, “take some time to think about it. You change your mind, you know where to find me.”

He says it like it’s already a done deal. “I have to go back to work,” Vace says woodenly, taking another step back.

“You know where to find me,” Amp repeats, teeth glinting in the gloom, and then he vanishes into the shadows. 

--

He can never quite bring himself to relax, during Glow. The whole month feels like bracing for a blow that never comes, even though it’s been five years since the last attack Vace jerks awake convinced the colony klaxons are sounding. 

What began as Rex’s New Years Party has expanded into nearly a full twenty-four hours of festivities, with multiple days of preparation. As per usual, he offers to work during the party in exchange for getting let off for dawn, which means he has an excuse not to join the herd of carousing colonists in costumes as they eat, drink, and dance until the yellow sun crosses the horizon, marking the beginning of Quiet. 

All the same, it’s hard to avoid the preparations. The bar is closed for a full day beforehand while people hang up decorations, the kitchens are working overtime, and Vace finds himself rearranging the rosters to allow the Garrison time to attend at least some of the party. Including himself, but he’ll just…go to bed. He has no dead to name.

Truth be told, he struggles to think of his quarters as “home”. They used to be home, but these days they feel like they belong to a different man. The few possessions on his shelves hold neither significance, nor joy, but he also can’t motivate himself to be rid of them. 

The last day of Glow doesn’t dawn, but the colony’s lighting comes up in a facsimile of “daytime”. Vace comes off the night shift to find the bar bustling not with patrons, but with a substantial working crew, decking the bar in softly glowing light and lengths of sheer fabric.

Rex and Anemone are standing outside, looking like something out of a nightmare. Anemone is holding a baby with a piebald shock of black-and-brown hair in her arms, jogging it gently on her hip as she talks quietly to Rex.

“--my friend,” Anemone says, “I’m honestly happy to help out, although we’ll miss you this year.”

Rex shrugs cheerfully, scratching the back of his neck. “It’s nice to be missed,” he grins, “people will appreciate me more next year. And I get to spend the first sunrise with Sev and Theo, so I can’t say I’m mad.”

There was a time where the image of Anemone holding a baby would have inspired – something. He’d wanted that future, a slice of what was meant to be happiness, but he looks at her and feels no longing at all. She is not the Nemmie of his dreams, a loving and devoted wife and mother. He wanted a fiction, and Anemone is real, more real and visceral than anything else in his life.

Out of the corner of his eye, he sees Anemone pass the baby back to Rex, who gives Anemone a gentle smile, drops a kiss on the top of her head – she laughs and bats at him halfheartedly – then walks back into the bar. 

“You just gonna lurk, or?” she says to him, which is approximately the moment Vace realises he is physically present in the situation and not watching it on a holoscreen. 

“This gets more elaborate every year,” Vace says, “and the celebrations go for longer. Something about a hangover breakfast? ”

Anemone shrugs gamely, palms turned up. “I thought it was a good idea,” she says, “Cumulus has been agonising over the menu for over a month.”

Vace’s gut twists, sharp and painful. Anemone is talking to him like it’s normal, like they’re two people who can carry on a regular conversation and there isn’t a terrible septic wound in his life where she used to be.

He can’t do this. It was easier when she was angry with him. “So, you and the mutt?” he asks, leering a little, exactly the kind of thing that would have made her furious and defensive years ago.

Anemone gives him an odd, askance look, and says nothing. “He’s clearly interested,” Vace continues, waiting for the defensiveness and the anger.

It never comes. Anemone looks bemused. “You…” she trails off, shaking her head, “seriously don’t…” 

“Don’t what?” Vace barks. Anemone lifts her chin at him – she’s studying him intently, like if she looks at him hard enough his skin will crack open and she can get a closer look at muscle and organ. Like a predator that’s smelled blood, like Vace is staring down the barrel of a plasrifle, the glint of light on a killing edge. 

Anemone’s mouth twists. “Rex and I broke up over a year ago,” she says, “we dated for a while. Here I was thinking you were crowing about being right, and you never noticed?” 

“How am I supposed to notice you sneaking around –” Vace growls, rounding on her. Anemone gazes up at him, brows furrowed.

“Vace,” she sighs, voice nauseatingly gentle, “everyone knew. He came to family dinners and everything.”

Vace had come to family dinners, had sat sporadically at an awkward dinner table – Anemone’s younger brothers had all been small and scrawny, the triplets difficult to tell apart even after one of the fuckers had shaved his head and another had let his hair grow long, and Nimbus had been tiny and nearly mute. Vace had hated those dinners, but they’d got him in Anne’s good graces, even as the four boys had met him with veiled hostility.

He tries to imagine Rex at that table, talking and laughing, and can picture it all too well. His face feels hot, and his palms are abruptly sweaty. His stomach churns. Without another word, Vace strides away from the bar, his expression frozen in place. Anemone calls something after him, but it’s only noise.

A small, angry voice in the back of his head says why are you upset about Rex having something you never fucking wanted, and he shoves it down with the bile in his stomach. 

I wanted it. I did want it. He feels sick with envy at the thought of being welcome there, of adults and children sitting down to talk over a family meal. He wants, with awful and perfect clarity, something he saw in pictures as a child and overheard through doors in the family barracks but that was never, ever for him. Instead he came home to, to, to–

Vace walks into his quarters, slams the door and sits on the floor with his back pressed against the door, eyes stinging. He had wanted it, wants it still, but sitting down with Anemone’s family had felt like he was watching something on a holoscreen, like playing a part, like he wasn’t actually there. None of it had felt real. 

It’s not fair, a voice in some dark and awful place in his chest cries out, why wasn’t I happy, it was all I wanted–

He chokes that voice until it falls silent.

–

He patrols, during the End of Glow party. Very little ever happens, but it’s still necessary. As he walks past the bar, he sees Marz arriving alongside Nomi, Anemone, and a gaggle of others he doesn’t recognise. 

She takes the arm of a tall figure draped in diaphanous dark fabric. Marz never arrives on the same person’s arm two years in a row, and her choice of arm candy is explicitly political. This year, it’s Nimbus, who in a reshuffle in Command has ended up Marz’s assistant. He’s not sure what statement she’s trying to make, other than that she has a new boytoy perhaps, and wonders what Anemone thinks of that.

It doesn’t matter. Vace keeps walking. Absolutely nothing of import happens – he shoos some amorous teenagers out of a construction site, and reprimands three more for trying to “borrow” an Expeditions vehicle, but otherwise he’s simply pacing through the darkness of the colony, watching the shadows for nothing. 

He doesn’t know if he’ll ever stop looking for the other shoe to drop. It’s been five years of peace now, but he might never breathe out. In the distance, he hears the music fade, and a distant howl of TEN, NINE, EIGHT–

 early quiet, year 16 post landing

Vace keeps walking, putting the light and noise behind him, until he finds himself back at the Garrison. The rest of the night shift are returning, which is expected, but less expectedly some of them appear to be getting into costume. 

Verdigris is sitting in a chair, uniform exchanged for a crimson lace shirt that does very little to conceal his solid build, while a figure shrouded in a hood bends over him applying eyeliner. Ampersand has discarded most of their clothing entirely, heading past Vace carrying a container of body glitter. “It’s about an hour til the naming of the dead,” they say, a little mischievously, “you’ve got time to change, if you want.”

Vace had, in truth, just been planning to go home and go to bed. He doesn’t have a costume. Both Verdigris and Ampersand were born on the Heliopause, he’s known them both since they were children, but they seem to have adopted this new tradition as their own. 

The hooded figure looks up at Vace, and he finds himself studied with grave violet eyes. “If you’d said something, we could have rustled up something,” Nimbus pats Verdigris on the face, and Verdigris blows a raspberry, “d’you want some eyeliner at least?”

“No,” the reply comes out too abruptly for Vace’s liking, and judging from the slight quirk of Nimbus’ mouth, it wasn’t unnoticed. Nimbus and Verdigris are crowded up against each other – Verdigris sitting in one of the break room chairs, Nimbus leaning back against the table with the other man’s chin tilted up and an eyeshadow stick grasped in his fingers. 

The ease with which Verdigris tilts his head back and closes his eyes sits strange and nauseous in Vace’s chest. No one has ever touched him like that. And with a sudden awful certainty, he wants it to happen. There is not a single person in his life he has ever been able to trust with the exposed line of his throat, and he used to be happy – no, content with that. 

Instead, he finds himself watching the two younger men as Nimbus smudges out Verdigris’ eye makeup, the gesture brisk and familiar. Verdigris smacks Nimbus’s knee at one point and says “Ow,” not with any real rancour. Nimbus plants a foot on the edge of the chair next to Verdigris’ thigh and turns the other man’s head back and forth for a moment, carefully evening out one side with the pad of a finger.

“Thanks, brother,” Verdigris grins, standing up and brushing himself off, “couldn’t be showing up with my eye makeup lopsided. There might be girls there, I hear.” 

Nimbus rolls his eyes and shoves Verdigris playfully. “I hate to tell you this,” he says, “but there are girls in most locations. You are even friends with a few.” 

Verdigris snorts, pulling Nimbus’s hood down over his eyes, then looks up at Vace. “I think Percy’s gone on ahead,” he says, “the next shift’s gone out, so you can head over to the bar and we’ll catch you up.” 

“I think I’ll go home,” Vace says coolly, “it’s been a long night.”

There’s a pause. Nimbus has pulled his hood back, expression unreadable, but Verdigris looks disapproving. For as long as he’s known Verdigris, he’s had an expression perpetually locked into a slight smile, and seeing his mouth turn down at the corners is startling. 

“You can’t skip out on the naming of the dead every year,” Verdigris sounds frustrated, “the other officers notice you don’t turn up.”

Nimbus folds his arms, blowing a lock of hair out of his eyes in a gesture that reminds Vace painfully of Anemone. “What Digby is saying,” he sighs, “is that it’s a bad look not to at least turn up and listen. People notice you avoid the End of Glow party every year.”

“It’s been a long day,” Vace repeats, drawing himself up to his full height. Verdigris is a tough kid, but he is a kid still, and Vace is bigger and older and his superior.

Verdigris shakes his head slowly. “Yeah, it’s a long day for…the third year running. Sure,” he says, “c’mon, Nimbus.” 

Without another glance at Vace, Verdigris strides past, Nimbus in his wake like a second shadow. As Vace watches them, he sees Verdigris’ shoulders slump, and hears Nimbus say something too low and too faraway for Vace to hear, pulling Verdigris into a side-hug.

Envy. Envy for Rex at the dinner table Vace never felt welcome at, envy for these two young men – boys, really – and the awful ease with which they relate to each other. Verdigris hadn’t looked surprised, when Nimbus had backed him up, hadn’t even looked at him.

Vace watches them vanish over the hill, then leaves the Garrison. Amphetamine, stationed outside, smiles and waves. It occurs to him that Amphetamine and Ampersand are twin siblings, and he wonders if the much more circumspect Ampersand agrees with Amphetamine, and his plan to leave. 

He dismisses the thought. Amphetamine is a braggart, but he’s not suicidal.

His plan had been to go home, but Verdigris’ words echo in his head, and instead his feet carry him towards the bar. All the doors and windows are open, spilling colonists onto the outdoor tables and the grass, talking and laughing with drinks in hand. All of them have dressed up, to varying degrees – some are in costume, others in their best clothes and glitter or face paint. A few people call greetings to Vace as he approaches, and he nods to them as he heads inside. 

Immediately, Vace is hit by a wall of noise. He can see Nomination in the DJ booth, nodding their head along with the music. The dance floor is full of people – he can see Patchouli and a woman with blonde-and-green hair, Nimbus and Verdigris with a group of friends, Marz with Tangent of all people in her arms. 

Rex isn’t behind the bar. Instead, there’s a cast of people he recognises – one of Anemone’s brothers, a tiny fey-like woman with a curtain of pale rosy hair, one of Recalcitrance’s fathers, and–

“What can I get for ya?”

Vace turns around. Behind the bar, wearing a corset and a crafty expression, is his failed hookup from…god, how many years ago now? What was her name?

“Mor,” he says, finally finding the name in a dusty crevasse of his memory, “something non-alcoholic, thank you.”

Mor nods. “Something refreshing? I gotta say, handsome, you look like you could use some perking up. I’ve seen you look worse, but…”

“Yes – look, I was not at my best that night,” Vace says apologetically, because it’s true and he’d prefer it if Mor didn’t spit in his drink, “made a complete ass of myself.” 

“You did,” Mor says cheerfully, “so if you want to finish what you started sometime you’ll have to ask so nicely. Grady, can we get a Strange Device over here when you’ve a second?”

Vace blinks, contemplates what asking so nicely might entail. It’s been a while since his last hookup. In fact, it’s been more than a year since he last went home with someone. This is the most overt offer he’s had in…well. He doesn’t know. 

He knows how to play this. He can plaster a lazy smile on his face, look Mor up and down, and he can be desirable for a few minutes.  But at the same time, the thought revolts him. It’s not Mor, who is objectively quite gorgeous and clearly knows it from the way she’s artfully leaning over the bar. 

It’s him. He doesn’t want anyone seeing him, touching him, the thought makes his skin crawl. It doesn’t make sense – he’s handsome, he’s in possibly the best condition of his life, but the idea of being intimate with someone makes him feel suddenly and hideously aware that something is wrong. When he thinks about it, the only times he’s had sex for the last few years, he’s been intoxicated. 

“I’ll keep that in mind,” he replies, and it comes out sounding wry rather than flirtatious. Mor, for her part, doesn’t seem put off by this – she collects a glass of something tall and lilac from the woman with the pale hair and passes it to Vace with a wry smile of her own. Unexpectedly, it’s delicious – sweet and zingy in a way that cuts through the fuzz in his mouth.

He sits up at the bar and turns to watch the colonists. The dancefloor is lively, and there are tables and couches scattered with people eating and drinking, and the doors are open and he can see people outside, sitting at outdoor tables or on picnic blankets. Anemone is among them, perched on an outdoor table and laughing. 

There is a sheet of plex between him and these people. He’s not actually one of them. He’s an interloper, a cuckoo. Vace does not belong here, because he does not belong anywhere. Vace is a weapon, left on a rack or in a cupboard to moulder and gather dust in a world that is no longer at war. 

He finishes the drink, and Mor gestures to his glass and mouths another? Vace shakes his head – too much sugar, and he won’t sleep – and she whisks the glass away and replaces it with plain water. The music is slowing and becoming more subdued, and the lights have come up a little. 

Eventually, the music trails off, and Marzipan steps gracefully up onto one of the tables. A hush falls over the crowd as Marz stands in the middle of the room, barefoot and smeared with glitter, a queen surveying her queendom.

“Tonight we observe the last of the dark days of Glow,” Marz declares, “and we remember those who are not here to see the sun rise on a new year.”

She lifts her glass high. “To my dear friend Aspartame!” 

“To Opalescent!”

“To Halitosis!”

“To Geranium!” 

“To Kombucha!” Vace glances over to see Anemone’s family clustered around one of the tables, so many of them they can’t all sit – Anemone is leaning on the back of someone’s chair, smiling, and one of the triplets has his arm around Anne’s shoulder.

Heart twinging, Vace looks back out at the crowd, and realises he’s being watched. Patchouli is sitting in a chair, wearing a deep crimson dress that makes her look like a lounge singer in an old holofilm. She tips an eyebrow at him, as if asking a question.

Of course. It’s Patchouli who always names Ardence. Patchouli must have actually known her, knows her better than Vace ever did. Vace shakes his head infinitesimally – why would he mourn a woman who never wanted him – and Patch looks away from him, the corners of her mouth turning down. 

Another name is missing. He won’t say it, can’t even think it, but he finds himself listening for it regardless. The names slow down, until there’s a long silence. Marz nods, only once, and then accepts an outstretched hand from Anemone down to the floor.

The music slowly starts to rise, and people drift back to the bar and to dancing. The bar staff have set out pitchers of water, and urns of tea – that’s new, he thinks, but he supposes it’s sensible. He fills a cup of tea, and walks out into the lightening morning. 

Later, he hears a distant roar as the colony greets the sun, and rolls over and pulls the covers over his head.

–

There are parts of his life, small as they are, that Vace enjoys. One of them is the walk from the Garrison at the end of his shift. It’s comfortably cool, and the colony is fairly quiet. He walks past one of the new Quarters blocks, and pauses to listen to faint music. Someone is playing the guitar and singing in a warm raspy tenor and all this work gone to waste, you made me climb then you shut the gate–  

The lights of the colony are low – something about light pollution interfering with nocturnal pollinators – and Vace can see a smear of galaxy overhead behind the dim light of the blue sun. His heart aches, just for a second, before he tears his eyes away and goes home to shower, throw his uniform in the laundry hamper, and go to sleep. 

Vace dreams fitfully, of being small and sitting crammed into his narrow bunk with his little head resting on a uniformed shoulder, listening to a deep voice read: “Tell me of a complicated man. Muse, tell me how he wandered and was lost–” 

He is woken, abruptly, by someone hammering on his door. He opens his holopalm to look at the time, and 0432 blinks at him in the dimness of his bedroom.

“Vace? Are you in there?” It’s Solace. Why is Solace waking him at four-thirty in the morning? They’re supposed to be on parental leave.

“Where else would I be,” Vace growls, rubbing his eyes and getting out of bed.

Silence for a few seconds. “Report to Command as soon as physically possible,” Solace says after a long moment, and he thinks they might sound relieved, “you’ll be briefed when you get there.” 

“Why the fuck,” Vace starts, but he can already hear footsteps receding. He blinks, then reaches for a clean uniform. 

When he leaves the Heliopause, the first thing that comes to mind is that the colony is quiet. It’s too quiet. A moment later, his holopalm buzzes with an emergency alert. 

MESSAGE: SECURITY INCIDENT UNDERWAY. PLEASE REMAIN IN YOUR HOMES UNLESS YOU ARE REQUESTED BY THE COUNCIL MEMBER FOR YOUR WORK SITE. IF YOU ARE ASSIGNED TO THE BREAKFAST SHIFT, PLEASE ATTEND THE KITCHENS AS NORMAL. THE COUNCIL WILL ISSUE AN UPDATE AS SOON AS THE INCIDENT HAS BEEN ASSESSED. 

Vace breaks into a run. As he heads towards Command, a shadow slides down the side of an adjacent building to land in a crouch, and Vace reaches for his weapon as Nimbus lurches into the light, shirtless and carrying the remainder of his work clothes over one arm.

“Mom,” Nimbus calls out, scampering up the stairs, tail lashing and fluffed out like a bottlebrush. Vace follows, heart racing, trailing behind Nimbus as he makes a beeline for the Council’s meeting room. Marz, Tangent, Fluorescent and Rhett are all arrayed around the table, Seeq standing at Marz’s elbow.

Anne is fully dressed and dusted with flour and holding an ice pack to one side of her face, alongside one of her sons, awake and alert and in Expeditions uniform, and a looming figure in a t-shirt and pyjama bottoms with a wild mass of dark hair who he realises is Chamomile. Solace has their holopalm open in a chair next to Anne, an attentive frown on their face. There’s a baby in a carrier on the table next to them, still out like a light despite the noise.

“They shot at Verbena,” Cirrus says, clearly furious, “with plas. They could have actually killed him. I saw the distress flare and got over there as soon as I could.”

“You were in one of the watchtowers?” Vace asks, recalling that a group from Expeditions were doing an overnight close to the colony and thus the watchtowers would have been occupied.

Cirrus looks up at him, handsome features creased with worry and anger. He’s wearing a full loadout of Expeditions gear, grappling hook strapped to one thigh. “No,” he replies, “Verbena was stationed at the South Tower so he’d see any flares from me, Utopia, and Luci while we were out. He sent one up himself when he was sure they’d gone and wouldn’t come back to finish him off –” 

Finish him off? “The Gardeners?” Vace frowns, trying to connect the pieces. Gardeners don’t use plasrifles, they wouldn’t need to, so it must have been–

“Amphetamine,” Solace says, while Vace’s heart drops into his stomach, “and between five and eight others. We’re still not sure who exactly, Verbena didn’t get a clear look at them and he has a concussion and a broken leg. Trim says he’s stable, but right now an unknown amount of colonists have stolen food, medical supplies, and ransacked Expeditions equipment storage.”

“We’re still piecin’ together what’s happened,” Utopia adds, “but both Verbena and Anne have been physically harmed and they’ve stolen equipment, medical supplies, and food. Nimbus, just out of curiosity, why’re you half dressed?”

Nimbus, listening to Seeq, shrugs. “Governor Marzipan said as soon as possible,” he says, “so I put trousers on and figured I’d sort out the rest when I got here. I have a group of people to rouse, and we’re going to do stocktakes for all the worksites to see what’s been taken, but I need to finish getting my instructions from the First Administrator.”

“As you were,” Utopia acknowledges, “although the raids on the kitchens and Expeditions were this morning, we can assume more has been taken, possibly siphoned off over time.”

“This was planned,” Rhett says bleakly, “and none of us knew.” 

Guilt twists, abrupt and awful. He shouldn’t say anything, his position is tenuous enough already, but – suddenly, for the first time, Vace has an occasion to rise to. It would be the end of his career as Second Security Officer, and nobody would ever trust him again, because he knew about a potential security risk and said nothing. 

But it would be the right thing to do. To own up, and accept the consequences. But then he’d lose the job, any remaining prestige or relevance.

Sol’s baby starts to cry, a thin thready wail, and Flulu immediately reaches for the carrier. “Do what you need to do,” she says, “I’ll take Vivi for a walk.” 

Solace gazes up at Flulu, expression unreadable, then returns to looking at Cirrus. “Do you know what time Verbena was assaulted, roughly?”

“We saw the flare at about 3:45,” Cirrus replies, “and he said he’d waited for them to be well clear, although he doesn’t know how long. You could probably check his holo activity.” 

Out of the corner of his eye, he sees Nimbus bow slightly to Seeq and Marz, then pick up his bag and begin pulling out a pair of work boots, an undershirt, a sleeveless vest with a hood, and something that looks like a harness or rig. The next moment, there’s a shadow in the doorway, and Vace whips around to find another of Anne’s sons, the one with the shaved head, and a tiny woman with long variegated-rosy hair. 

“Co-ordinating an emergency response is hard work,” Cumulus says, “you shouldn’t do it on an empty stomach. We’ve got food, is what I’m saying.”

Anne starts, beginning to get out of her chair. “Breakfast,” she begins, before being arrested by a long-fingered hand on her shoulder. 

“Milly and the breakfast crew are capable,” Miles rasps, “Ante, I think I should remind you you took a plasrifle butt to the face.”

Ante? Vace had assumed that Chamomile and Antecedent were no longer together, but seeing them in the same room – the familiarity with which Miles says Ante, that Anne seems comforted by the gesture – says something else entirely.

“Momma, we got this,” Cumulus puts down a plate in front of Anne, “Askance and Mor are serving the early risers as we speak. You handle the emergency comms, then please rest or I’ll call in Stratus for a medical opinion.” 

Anne sits back in her chair, then takes a pastry off the plate, a resigned expression on her face. Cumulus kisses the top of her head, then moves to put down more plates – small sweet and savoury pastries and sandwiches, and heated urns labelled COFFEE, BLEP, and GRADY SPECIAL. Vace hears him murmur “stop eating the eye candy and help me unload” to the tiny woman, who tears her eyes away from Nimbus in the process of pulling his undershirt on to unload mugs, cutlery, and napkins.

It’s strangely comforting. It’s like being on the Heliopause again, during re-entry, the whole ship suddenly united. Except this time there’s no immediate mortal danger, he’s sitting in a warm room drinking heavily-sweetened tea and eating a savoury instead of fearing for his life. But there’s a strange clarity – most of these people disdain him and he knows it, but they have a common cause. 

“We need an audit of the Garrison’s equipment,” Rhett is saying to both Vace and Nimbus, who is in the process of shrugging into some form of harness, “and we need to know who has been involved in the logs.”

Vace frowns at him. “The equipment shed is my responsibility,” he says, “I signed all the plascutters in at the end of my shift. The only ones unaccounted for were the ones that went out with the graveyard shift.” 

There are still plasrifles in the equipment shed, but they’re used for sport shooting when they’re used at all, and the Garrison have switched to plascutters. A plasrifle is just a weapon, but a plascutter can be used to for various purposes and not even the Gardeners had objected to the Garrison continuing to carry them. 

Rhett frowns at him, just a little, and says nothing. If something was unaccounted for…well, yes. Vace would be under suspicion. Everyone in this room knows he supported Lum, that he lost power and prestige and Anemone when Marz had come to power. Even if no-one in this room knows Amphetamine tried to recruit him, he has a motive.

It’s not fair. For the first time in years, he feels necessary, but even now nobody really trusts him.

“Okay,” Nimbus says, pulling a plascutter out of his bag and – oh, that’s what the harness is for. It’s anchor points for the plascutter, a sheathed knife, a multitool, a small first aid kit, and an emergency flare. He’d assumed that Nimbus’ presence on Marz’s arm at Glow had been Marz showing off her new toy, but looking at the way Nimbus’s head is tilted down to listen to Rhett and the confidence with which Nimbus handles the plascutter, Marz was showing off not a plaything but an instrument. 

Vace watched Nimbus glances forlornly at the plates of food - he almost certainly hasn’t had breakfast – then swipe a savoury off a plate and head to the door. The rosy-haired woman steps out in front of him, depositing a thermos in his hands. “Stop in at the kitchen when you’re finished,” she murmurs, only just loud enough for Vace to hear, “but this should keep you going.” 

Nimbus accepts the thermos, pulling the woman into a brief one-armed hug, leaning his cheek against the top of her head. “I’m going to do a headcount of the Security Officers on duty first,” he says, pulling on a jacket that almost completely conceals the harness and fistbumping Cumulus, “then I have instructions to rouse replacements for anyone unaccounted first, and then move on to checking in on the other departments. Personnel checks first, then inventory. I’ll report back as I go.”

Solace nods. “It’s probably best to keep people inside the colony until we can do a headcount. Utopia,” they turn to Utopia, while Nimbus vanishes out the door, “you and Cirrus are going to check on your team in their homes, and we’ll check people off as they arrive at their worksites?”

“And Elucidate and Rumination,” Utopia confirms, “we’re goin’ in pairs.”

Chamomile turns to look at her, frowning. “Do you need one more, Pia? I can get into kit if any of you need to tap out.”

“We’ll be good as we are,” Utopia replies with a shrug, “get some more shuteye and come see what needs doing, we might need your help figuring out where to search for anyone who decides to turn back.”

“I’m going to need to speak to the Gardeners and assure them this little offshoot wasn’t authorised,” Marz rubs her temples, “Solace, have you heard from Sym?”

“He’s still with the Array,” Solace replies, “Cal will report back the minute he hears anything. Corona and Nomi have confirmed that all the creche kids are accounted for, by the way.”

Anne’s shoulders slump in clear relief, and Cumulus briefly places a hand on her forearm while Cirrus scoots closer to lean against her. His gut twists irrationally looking at them – he’d sat down to eat with Anemone’s family, but that had been everybody on guard, and what he is witnessing is something awful and unguarded. 

Cumulus hands Cirrus a mug, and for a half second he can see them both in their identical profile – high cheekbones and sharp chin, the same aquiline nose. The two of them wear their identical faces and frames so differently it’s easy to forget the triplets are identical.

They’re a family. This is what he was supposed to have, what it’s supposed to look like. “I put enough squeeger honey in it that it’s basically syrup,” Cumulus says to Cirrus, “that should keep you going.”

“That is a disgusting transgression against good blep,” Cirrus replies tiredly, “I owe you my life.”

Gut roiling, Vace turns to Rhett and asks, “Am I necessary here? Someone needs to take the inventory.”

Rhett’s mouth quirks, and Vace abruptly recalls that if the logs have been tampered with and the contents of the shed aren’t what they should be, suspicion will fall on him first. 

“Fine,” Rhett says, “Marz, Nimbus has alerted me to three Garrison staff unaccounted for – two from the overnight shift, and two of the early crew. Nimbus is rousing replacements. Olivaceous, meet him at the Garrison and get his assistance checking the logs.”

“Yes, sir,” Vace responds, wooden, and then he is out the door. On his way out, the rosy-haired woman hands him a pastry without comment, and he doesn’t fully register its presence until he’s outside and inhaling fresh air. 

It’s still dark, and spark snow is falling on the colony. Vace takes a bite of the still-warm pastry – it’s filled with large flat mushroom, savoury and hearty and delicious. A moment later, his holopalm flashes with an emergency alert. 

MESSAGE: THE COUNCIL HAVE ASSESSED THE SITUATION AND DEEMED IT SAFE FOR DAILY BUSINESS TO RESUME WITH THE EXCEPTION OF A TEMPORARY SUSPENSION OF ALL ACTIVITIES INVOLVING LEAVING THE COLONY BOUNDARIES WHILE EXPEDITIONS AND THE GARDENERS CO-ORDINATE AN INVESTIGATION. PLEASE ADVISE COMMAND IF ANY MEMBERS OF YOUR HOUSEHOLD ARE UNCONTACTABLE OR UNACCOUNTED FOR. 

There’s a shuffle next to him, and Vace glances over to find Solace standing a metre away, carrying a blinking and sleepy-looking infant in their arms. “What a mess,” they sigh, “here’s hoping they see sense, and turn back.”

“You think they will?” Vace asks, frowning. 

Solace doesn’t reply for a long moment, looking out at the colony. “You know,” they say, “I find it hard to believe that if they were this organised, that they never once reached out to you.”

A flare of anger, but…dull, and remote. “You really think I was involved in any of this?” Vace snaps, rounding on them. Solace lifts their chin at him, adjusting their hold on the baby.

“I’m interested in why they apparently never thought to ask you to be involved,” Sol shrugs, “we all know you didn’t want to be a Security Officer. We all know you’ve had…performance issues. If I was looking for discontents, you’d be among the first people I’d look to.”

Vace opens his mouth, an angry retort on the tip of his tongue, and Solace makes a dismissive gesture. “I’m not accusing you of anything,” they continue before he can speak, “I’m wondering if there’s anything that seemed innocuous at the time that you might be…re-evaluating now.”

Solace’s eyes are dark as grave-dirt, dark as night, fathomless. The effect is not blunted in the least by the infant in their arms. If anything, their uncanniness is in even sharper relief coupled with the tenderness with which they rest their cheek on the baby’s downy head, swaying gently. 

He can’t tell if Solace genuinely believes what they’re saying, but it occurs to him that he might be being offered an out. An opportunity to cover for himself, and admit what he does know. They’re right – it’s suspicious that he of all people wouldn’t have been asked. If he said he was content, let alone happy, nobody would believe him. 

Solace is dangerous, even now, standing outside Command in the dark cuddling their – two, three month old? He doesn’t know. He’d never thought of Solace as particularly nurturing, but perhaps they’d grown into it or perhaps they always were and he just never saw it. Why are you doing this? You hate me.

“Amphetamine did…” he trails off, “I think he was sounding me out, to see if he could recruit me. I didn’t think anything of it, because anyone with half a brain knows that popular opinion is with Marz.”

Solace nods, as if that makes sense. “So you wouldn’t support a coup,” they say, “but leaving?”

Vace frowns, staring out at the snow-dusted colony. Wouldn’t it be a relief, to walk away, to leave behind this place that doesn’t want him? There’s nowhere to go, but–

(at least you’d be gone and maybe you’d go fighting, instead of rotting away here where nobody wants you. just like–)

“I don’t want to die,” Vace says finally, “and those nullshits will die. The Gardeners will kill them, not that they’ll fucking need to, beause there’s no way they can establish a colony with those numbers.”

Solace says nothing. He dares a glance over at them, and finds them looking out at the colony, not at him. The baby is looking at him, with bleary eyes the same deep velvety brown as Solace’s.

He doesn’t know why they’re doing this. Either Solace is helping him lie, or they actually believe he wouldn’t have any part in this. 

“You don’t exactly like having me around,” Vace says, “why not pin this on me? I know at least one person in that room is thinking it.” 

Solace arches an eyebrow. “Vace,” they sigh, “nursing a petty grudge that dates back to when I was a teenager is pretty far down my priority list. If you are in some way responsible for this, the consequences will fall as they may. But I don’t think you’re involved.”

Vace frowns at them, and Solace gives him a sharp little smile, like they’re bringing him in on a secret. “Because you’re smart enough to know it’s suicidal,” they shrug, “and you don’t want to die badly in the woods.”

You don’t want to die. Not entirely. He doesn’t want to live like this, and he doesn’t see any other way he can live. He certainly doesn’t want to die far from home, far from anyone who might feel his absence. A death that would mean nothing, with no one to grieve him.

“I don’t,” he agrees, “I need to meet Nimbus at the Garrison.” 

Solace smiles that strange sharp-edged smile, and heads back into the building. Vace crosses the commons, watching the lights in some of the houses turn on as colonists begin to wake up for the new day. 

The Garrison is full of worried-looking security officers. Verdigris is in the break room, drinking a cup of blep tea while Ampersand twists their fingers together, eyes red and uniform in disarray. 

“Surely there’s been a mistake,” they say, “the surveyor misidentified him, or–” 

“We can’t find Amp anywhere,” Verdigris replies, glancing up at Vace, “when did you last see him?”

Ampersand looks like they’re struggling to convince themselves, let alone anyone else. “At dinner yesterday, before his shift.”

“He didn’t report to the Garrison at the end of his shift,” Nimbus adds, “at the moment, we’re hoping that we recover everyone currently missing. He didn’t give any indication to you that…?”

A shake of the head, then Ampersand spots Vace and stands up, knocking over their chair. “Sir,” they croak, “sir, there must have been some mistake, Amp wouldn’t –”

“We’re still piecing together what’s happened,” Vace replies, sounding more assured than he feels, “stand down. If this has been a mistake, we’ll locate Amphetamine in short order. For now, Nimbus and I need to inspect the equipment shed.” 

Nimbus nods, following Vace to the equipment shed – which is less a shed, really, and more a room inside the Garrison’s aboveground section. There’s a holoscreen placed near the entrance, used to log equipment sign-outs and ins, and then neatly organised shelves of storage.

Vace heads straight for the racks of plasrifles, pressing his holopalm against the lock until it flashes green and disengages with a clunk, and his heart drops into his stomach. When he clocked out the previous evening, the racks had all been full, a little dusty with disuse. Now, five brackets that should hold plasrifles sit empty.

“Five plasrifles missing,” he calls out, “those nullshits. What are you doing back there, kid?”

Nimbus looks up from the holoterminal. “Marz authorised a skeleton key,” he says, holding up a tiny device that looks like a datastick, “I’m accessing the admin logs. They should be able to tell us who’s been logging entries and exits, using their holopalm information. There aren’t cameras in here, just on the entries, because it’s locked down.”

A list flashes up on the screen – a longer list of general accesses to the equipment, and a shorter one of accesses to the locked section. The shorter list is solely Vace or Rhett. 

Nimbus gives Vace an askance look, drawing himself up a little. Down by his legs, his tail has fluffed up. Right. He’s under suspicion now. “You can’t be fucking serious,” Vace growls, fists clenching at his sides. 

“If I don’t ping Verdigris every two minutes,” Nimbus replies, violet eyes glacial, “he’s coming in here, because I’m currently alone with one of two people in this colony who regularly access our weapons. It’s nothing personal, but it’s not like I have any reason to trust you.” 

And he doesn’t. Vace grits his teeth, while Nimbus heads towards the plex barrier. “Huh,” he says, peering at the lock through the plex, “Vace, can you come over here?”

“Why?”

“Someone’s fucked with this door. Look.”

Nimbus gestures to the lock, tail beginning to lash agitatedly. Vace squints and bends down to take a closer look – he can’t see anything amiss. “The lock’s active,” he frowns, “the hell are you talking about?”

“One moment,” Nimbus waves the skeleton key over the lock, which disengages with a pleasingly haptic thunk. He swings the door partially open, then gestures to the mechanism, which has popped back out so the door will lock when it shuts. 

Vace kneels down to look at the mechanism. Nimbus is right, something about it looks off. Vace pushes down on it experimentally, and it stays in place. “It’s on an odd angle,” he says, “like it’s bent, but it should still work.”

“Yeah,” Nimbus frowns, “but…that’s metal. How did it bend like that?”

Vace considers the problem at hand – a metal locking mechanism bent oddly, the edge nearly pointing towards him. “Significant stress, possibly over time…but, how? The plex would warp or crack first.” 

Nimbys stands up, tail switching back and forth, and goes to look at the hinges. “Good theory. I wish Nougat was here,” he says, “but she’s running an audit of the Construction shed, because it looks like they stole…hm.”

“What,” Vace barks, climbing to his feet. His knees twinge unhappily. 

Nimbus shrugs off his jacket, and draws a knife from a sheath attached to the harness with casual ease. Inwardly, Vace’s assessment of Nimbus as a potential threat ratchets up a notch. The point of the knife goes into the hinge, and Nimbus murmurs, “Oh, you clever motherfuckers. They fucked with the hinges.”

He pulls out a screwdriver, and within two minutes the whole door comes off its hinges, opening just wide enough to admit someone. The lock creaks, but remains active. It’s a small gap, too small to admit Vace but when he thinks on it, Amphetamine’s rail-thin frame could probably do it.

“You probably won’t-” Vace starts, but Nimbus is already exhaling and experimentally sticking his upper body through the gap. Much to Vace’s surprise, it looks like he might actually fit through, although he doesn’t push it any further.

Nimbus frowns. “So, the list of people who accessed this area isn’t an indicator of who’s actually been here any more. And someone would have used a tool kit to partially disassemble those hinges…shit, hold on.”

There is a long pause while Nimbus looks at his holopalm. “Nougat’s just sent me a running list of the stuff missing from Construction. It looks like someone tampered with the logs to cover their tracks, because I’ve just been advised one of the toolkits that should be there, isn't. It was logged as in place a week ago, but it's not.” 

A week. “Amphetamine has been in here…” Vace glances at the logs, “four times in the last week. The last two times, he had Unison with him…but, I don’t think Unison was on shift two days ago. Or the day before.” A horrible thought occurs to him. “Unison was meant to be on shift overnight. Did she come back?”

Behind Nimbus, a door swings open. “Guys, we’re missing ten people and counting, including-” Verdigris stops when he sees Vace’s expression, tilting his head. “What’s up?” 

“Officer Verdigris,” Vace says, sounding calmer than he feels, “did you see Unison come off duty?” 

Verdigris grimaces expressively. “No, sir,” he says, “she’s one of the ones we can’t account for.”

All in all, there are sixteen colonists unaccounted for, and equipment stolen from almost every department. Vace pulls some of the remaining reservists onto guard duty, in case they come back and decide to do something stupid. 

His holopalm chimes near constantly with updates – this was an organised effort, likely over months, to siphon or steal equipment and recruit colonists to their cause. They’re missing a Expeditions vehicle, a forged authorisation sitting in the Expeditions logs with Utopia’s signature – or something that looks like it. 

Logically, he should feel vindicated, that he’s necessary, that this place still needs protecting. But it all just feels like a failure.  He should have turned Amphetamine in. He should have throttled their little suicide mission in the cradle – because it was a suicide mission. There will be no other place for Amphetamine, or Unison, or any of the sixteen who left. 

He’s in Command, drinking something hot and sweet and spicy (A “Grady Special”, whatever that means) out of a thermos, when he realises he is being observed. 

It takes him a moment for him to fully recognise the woman in the doorway – she’s tall, with long dark hair pulled into a voluminous ponytail and an overgrown fringe threaded with silver close to the temples. She’s in dark trousers and a cream wrap blouse with gold accents, clasps at her waist displaying the Heliopause’s triangle motif. A blue cape-style jacket finishes off the ensemble, marking this woman as a member of Command’s staff.

The woman realises she has been noticed, and lifts her chin at him, and that’s when he finally recognises Patchouli. A little older, a little heavier, a little greyer. But Patchouli, all the same. 

“Long fucking day,” she says, leaning on the doorframe, “I’m guessing yours has been longer?”

Vace grunts, mid-sip of this mysterious “special”, which is really quite good – violently blue and earthy-sweet, cut through with something mildly spicy and warming. “I got woken at four-fucking-thirty,” he says, “so, probably.”

“Mm,” Patchouli shakes her head, “Today is normally my day off, but needs must. I shall not lie and say I was pleased to cancel my date night, though.”

Vace’s brain tries to picture Patchouli – perpetually dour paper-shuffler Patchouli – on a date and rolls over and gives up. “You date?” he frowns at her, a little incredulously.

Patchouli considers him for a long moment, then laughs. He’s heard Patch laugh before, but this is the first time it’s sounded genuine. “Vace,” she says, “I married Castigate four years ago, and that is not taking into account that I consider Ida my partner. So, yes, I do date.” 

There is a strange jolt of embarassment. It’s stupid. It’s not like he would have been invited to the wedding, not like he and Patchouli are friends , but also – he doesn’t remember a time before Patchouli. He remembers her as a dour and angry teenage clerk, friendless and the butt of more than a few pranks taking advantage of her augment to render her cowering and whey-faced, hands over her ears. 

Patchouli is not that teenager anymore. “I…have been meaning to find you,” she says, “there has been reason to think over a few things.”

(Illustration by wilting-fl0wer! <33)

Oh, but he’s sick of this. He’s sick of the scrutiny, of being watched, of the pity most of all. So Patchouli has a wife, so she has some fucking wisdom to dispense, what-the-fuck-ever.

“What the fuck do you want, Patchouli,” Vace grumbles, “what could you possibly have to say to me?”

Patchouli flinches, but there is no satisfaction in it. “I say Ardence’s name every Glow because someone should remember her,” she says, “but I actually did not know Dani that well. She was kind to me, and there’s no one else to say it.”

Dani. You knew her well enough to call her a nickname. Ardence had only ever been “your mother” or “that woman” or – well. Never Dani. 

“Good for fucking you,” Vace snarls, slamming his cup down on the table, “she walked out of my life when I was a toddler and didn’t fucking look back, so you knew her more than I did.”

Patchouli stares at him for a long moment. She didn’t even flinch, at the loud noise. “You would have been–” she starts, then shakes her head, “fuck, of course. Of course.” 

“Woman, what the fuck are you talking about,” Vace grates out. He’s missed something, somehow. Patchouli’s eyes are wide, her lips thinned into nothing. She looks shocked and upset, not at his behaviour – the shouting and the swearing and the abrupt slam of cup against table should have got more than that.

Patchouli looks back at him like she’s never seen him before, then drops her head forward into her hands. “Stars,” she mumbles into her hands, “fucking stars, just when I think there’s nothing left…”

She stands, dusting herself off. “We’ll speak again,” she adds, “when I – when I know I’m telling you the truth. Fuck.”

“The fuck do you mean,” Vace replies, from behind a sheet of glass or perhaps plastic film. His chest feels tight. Dani. People called her Dani, and Patchouli knew her, and she knows something–

Patchouli opens her mouth, closes it, then viciously kicks one of the chairs. It clatters violently against the desk. “Fucking Edifice,” she snarls, crimson eyes so wide with anger he can see the whites around her eyes, “that spineless, dishonourable shit of a man.” 

She turns on her heel and leaves, the distinctive sound of military-issue steel-toed boots against Command’s floors receding into the distance.

Vace’s throat closes over. This isn’t real. None of this is real. This whole awful day has been a dream, and he’ll wake up, and none of this will have happened at all. Mechanically, he lifts a hand to his mouth and bites down until he tastes blood. 

Nothing. Just a bleeding fist and a brightly lit room and Edifice. 

late quiet, year 16 post landing

They recover the stolen vehicle, eventually. It’s weather damaged, some part of the engine broken but fixable, according to the green-haired woman who promptly begins checking it over. “This would have been fixable,” she says, “but I doubt they stole the right parts. I can probably get this working again. Verbena, can you radio back to the depot and let Instance know we need–”

They find evidence that humans have been here, sometimes not that long ago. Ration wrappers, the remains of a fire, a shelter long collapsed. The vehicle looks like it might have been lived in – there’s bedding in it, and a makeshift icebox full of lukewarm water and rotted food. 

They never find any bodies. 

Chapter Text

when i try to open up to you, i get completely lost
houses swallowed by the earth, windows thick with frost
and i reach down deep within, but the pathways twist and turn
and there's no light anywhere, and nothing left to burn

and i am this great, unstable mass of blood and foam
and no emotion that's worth having could call my heart its home
my heart's an autoclave, my heart's an autoclave

—the mountain goats, "autoclave"

mid pollen, year 16 post landing

It’s a pleasantly warm Pollen afternoon when Vace next speaks to Patchouli. 

Apparently, the holoarchives are full of Earth movies, and as a side project Patchouli has been arranging screenings once a month. He found this out, on a personal level, when she arrived in an otherwise empty bar to begin setting up a projector screen right next to the table he was sitting at.

“Can’t you just use a big holoscreen?” Vace grouses, picking up his mug and getting up to watch Patchouli pull down an opaque screen with a long, thin rod with a hook on the end.

Patchouli ignores him, pulling the screen into place with a rattle. “The transparency of large holoscreens is suboptimal for watching a film,” she informs him, “you cannot fully appreciate lighting, colour grading, or similar artistry as well. You are welcome to stay and watch it, we are screening a classic thriller that I believe may appeal to you.” 

Vace relocates to the bar, blep tea in hand. Truthfully he was here because it’s his day off, and he doesn’t want to rot at home.

Up at the bar, he can see the tiny woman - Anterograde - poking at something in a pot out the back. Paramour and a middling-height androgynous person with floppy blue hair are both putting away clean glassware, and other than refilling his mug, no one talks to him. 

It’s strangely peaceful. Pink-tinted sunshine filters in the bar windows as Patchouli and the person with the blue hair move a few booths around to make space around the screen, and further into the kitchen the pot starts making an ominous rattling noise.

“Grady, baby,” Paramour calls over her shoulder, “have you seasoned that with anything weird? It smells like something and I don’t know what it is.”

“I’m making a regular sweet and salty batch for cowards,” Grady shoots back, blowing a strand of golden-pink hair out of her face, “and some with tajin. I think it’s pretty tasty, and Nimbus and Digitalis basically annihilated my first run and then said I should have put more tajin in.”

Paramour laughs, shaking her head. “Tajin popcorn,” she says, “not anything I would have thought of. Vace, you staying for the film?”

Vace blinks, suddenly painfully aware he is sitting at the bar and not watching all this on a holoscreen. “Probably not,” he says, “I came here to get away from people being rowdy.”

“It’s not a rowdy thing,” Grady shrugs, “though if you just want to nick a container of snacks and a flask of blep and go find somewhere quieter, you’re very welcome to. Hi, Nomi.”

Vace, still digesting the offer of snacks, realises that Nomi has pulled up a bar stool and accepted a glass of something tall and milky-blue. “The new chapter is uploading now,” they say to a delighted-looking Mor, “if nothing goes wrong, it should be available later tonight!”

“A little post work treat for me, then,” Mor grins, “you look cute, are you excited?”

Nomi smiles, brief and dazzling. “Yes! I’ve never actually been on a date before?” 

People are asking Nomi on dates? It seems unlikely, but so did Patch getting married. So did Rex and Anemone dating each other. They’re not to his taste, but Vace tries to imagine the kind of person who would find Nomi attractive. Surely there’s someone.

Nomi seems to notice him for the first time, one of their eyebrows lifting slightly. When they were younger, Nomi always stammered and looked at the floor, and they’re still not looking him in the eye but between his eyebrows. He knows that trick. He used to do it himself, in response to look me in the eye when I’m talking to you–

Vace shuts the thought down, curling his fingers around his mug and willing them not to shake. Edifice has been dead for over a decade, and cannot touch him now.

“Well, if he’s asked you out it’s because he already thinks there might be something there,” Mor is saying, “so just enjoy hanging out, he already thinks you’re cool.”

Nomi looks beseechingly at Grady, who shrugs. “I’ve never asked anyone out,” she smiles ruefully, “but if I did it would be because I did actually like them.”

“Yeah, and when are you asking out,” the floppy-haired person puts a hand to their chin, “hmm, what’s his name–” 

Grady slams a hand over their mouth. “If you know who it is, Az,” she says pleasantly, “you’d best keep your mouth shut!” 

“Mystery crush is a boy!” Az crows, wriggling out from behind Grady’s attempt to cover their mouth, “I will find out who he is! I will judge him ruthlessly! Only the best for our princess!”

“Can it, Askance,” Grady grumbles, “I appreciate your zeal, but I don’t think he’s even interested in me.” 

To Vace’s surprise, Mor makes eye contact and rolls her eyes expressively, her gaze flicking to Nomi, who bites their lip to hide a smile. Involuntarily, the corners of his mouth tilt up. 

Just for a moment, he’s actually here. Vace is watching Grady and the much-taller Askance grapple with each other and argue, while Mor smiles indulgently at them and Nomi nurses their drink.  

Colonists have begun filtering inside. A short, stocky man with lilac dreadlocks offers Nomi a hand down from their barstool and the two of them claim a couple of beanbag chairs, chattering quietly. One of Anemone’s brothers wanders up to the bar – the one who works in Medbay, collecting a cup of blep and giving Askance a fistbump over the bar.

It’s rapidly getting too noisy and crowded for his liking, so Vace refills a mug from the urn of blep tea and makes to leave. Just as he turns around, someone coughs politely, and he looks up to see Mor shaking a container at him.

“Snack for the road,” she says, as Vace reaches up to accept the container on autopilot. It’s warm in his hands, and it smells savoury.

He looks up at Mor, who shrugs. “Don’t look so skeptical,” she says, “it’s just popcorn.” 

“Why give me this?” he asks, gesturing at her with the container.

Mor shrugs again. “For shits and giggles. It’s a snack, honey, I’m not playing chess with you.” 

Vace nods, for lack of anything else to say, and heads outside. There are outdoor tables, sitting empty, and he can drink his tea and eat his popcorn and watch the colony go by and think…well, nothing in particular. 

Behind him, he can hear colonists chatting and laughing, slightly muffled. He is behind plex, but it’s where he belongs. These people, he’s not one of them. He’s an interloper. He’ll never actually be a part of anything, but he wasn’t man enough to join Amp’s doomed mission and die trying to be a part of something else.

The popcorn is…good. It’s delicious, actually – there’s something in it that cuts through the oil and salt, and before he’s fully cognizant of what he’s doing he’s wiping his fingers around the container to pick up the last of the oil-soaked seasoning. 

He’s so occupied making a mess of himself like a small child licking the dessert bowl that he nearly jumps out of his fucking skin when Patchouli clears her throat. 

In daylight, it’s more apparent that time has changed her. There are the beginnings of fine lines at the corners of her eyes, threads of silver in her hair. But more than that, in his memories Patchouli is perpetually in the full-body scrunch of a cat with tape on its paws, not poised and serene.

Patchouli sits down, smoothing out the fabric of her trousers. He’s still getting used to seeing her in work clothes that aren’t a modified non-regulation uniform – he remembers Patchouli wearing her “accidentally” bleached uniform proudly, but looking at her now he realises proud is not the same as comfortable. 

“In the colony’s archives,” Patchouli says without preamble, “are databases of every legal decision handed down on board the Heliopause. A little buried, but they are accessible if you know where to look.”

Vace stares at her blankly. “Patchouli,” he feels himself frown like his face belongs to someone else, “what the fuck are you talking about? Legal decisions?”

Patchouli frowns at him minutely. “Legal cases,” she repeats, “some of them heavily redacted. But every single one is required to be stored, in case they are needed as precedents for future decisions. The database is still accessible through the holoarchive.”

“What,” Vace sighs, pinching the bridge of his nose, “are you trying to tell me, Patchouli?”

There is a long pause. “If you were to be looking for a specific decision or decisions the database is searchable,” Patchouli says serenely, “it would be difficult without help, but it could be done.”

Legal decisions. What could the court on board the Heliopause have to do with anything? Patchouli is trying to tell him something, but–

Fucking Edifice, she had said, that spineless shit of a man.

What do legal decisions have to do with any of that? Edifice was disciplined at one point, busted down to a civilian, but he knows about that. And Patch wouldn’t regard being a civilian as a dishonour, so what–

“Pash!” 

Vace looks up, to see a child of maybe six trotting up to Patchouli, a look of consternation on their tiny face. “Pash,” the child says, insistent, “the movie!” 

“I will start the movie soon, Nic,” Patch replies warmly, “I just needed to sort something. Nic, this is Olivaceous. Vace, this is my stepson Vernacular.”

Vernacular smiles, displaying two missing front teeth. “‘’Vashus,” he says, “hello! Pash? Going now?” 

“Time to go before your Mummy eats all the snacks,” Patch agrees, rising to take Vernacular’s small hand in her own before turning to look at Vace.

“Think it over,” she says, and then the child is leading Patch back inside the bar.

Back in his quarters, lying in his bed, Vace pulls up the colony archives. There’s the media archives, for films and music and books, but other archives, too – material preserved from Earth, and publicly available colony records – births, deaths, marriages. 

He’d never paid attention to the link labelled Heliopause Archives. He’d assumed it was just the onboard media, but…when he came to think of it…

Vace opens a list of cryptic titles, some of them partially redacted. K v The Administration of the Heliopause. T v A. There’s a search bar, and on an impulse he types in Ardence.

Nothing. He tries Dani, nothing. When he tries Edifice, he finds a record of a legal dispute from two years before Edifice’s death, an attempt to contest his dishonourable discharge from the military. It’s a short judgement, open and shut – Edifice’s persistent “antisocial behaviour”, which means constant drunken aggression, made him no longer fit for service.

It’s nothing he doesn’t already know. It’s nothing everybody doesn’t know. But clearly, Patchouli thinks there’s something importany, hidden somewhere in this labyrinth of initials.

He just can’t find it. There’s more here than he expected, and every so often he sees the name Patchouli listed as the stenographer on duty for the Heliopause’s court. 

What was so important that Patchouli, who doesn’t even like him, thought he needed to know? 

early dust, year 16 post landing

Vace is drinking a cup of blep tea in the Garrison’s break room when he sees the incoming message from Rhett. 

Rhetorical: There is something I need to discuss with you. Stop by my office when your break is finished.

Whatever this is, it can’t be good news. Vace takes another sip of milky tea. In one of the armchairs, Verdigris is sitting and reading, and across from him Ampersand stares vacantly out the window, mouth turned down at the corners. 

All his memories of Ampersand feature them as Amphetamine’s shadow. Amphetamine, he knows, learned to play the game on board the Heliopause and was heaped with praise for how well he played the part. Ampersand simply faded into the background, a corollary to Amphetamine's braggadocio. 

On paper, Ampersand is an excellent soldier – Vace pulled the numbers, and even with the same eyesight-based enhancement as their twin Ampersand has the better records on the rifle range, the superior service record. But it was Amphetamine, louder and more brutal, who people paid attention to. 

Ampersand simply vanished into the background, and even now they live in the shadow of Amphetamine. Vace believes Ampersand when they say they didn’t know anything about their brothers plan to leave, but what keeps him up at night is why Amphetamine didn’t ask someone whose entire life has revolved around being “Amphetamine’s sibling” to go. That perhaps, while Amphetamine haunts Ampersand, Amphetamine simply did not think of them at all.

He recognises it – the hunger for glory, for recognition, for every form of power Amphetamine could grasp. What he doesn’t understand is that Amphetamine had a family. A twin whose life revolved around him, parents who loved him, he'd been dating Unison for five years. Amphetamine had gone home to a warm room to eat dinner with his parents and a sibling. Unlike Vace, who went home to a dark and empty bunk on a good day before he got into the juvenile barracks. 

It was all he’d wanted. To be one of those families, acting as a family should. But there was a dark and empty bunk then, and there are his dark and empty quarters now. 

His eyes move from Ampersand to Verdigris. Digby is part of the Garrison’s new guard, and is not a soldier and has never been one. He doesn’t dislike Vace exactly, but it’s increasingly obvious that Verdigris and Temperance and the rest of the Garrison’s junior personnel consider Vace and indeed Rhett to be relics of an bygone era. 

Rhett fought against the government of Old Earth, and grew up in a compound perpetually under siege. Vace was born a soldier, raised a soldier, and a soldier was the only thing he could ever be. Now, military force is…superfluous, even unwelcome, the methods he was raised into and praised for ill suited for the world he now lives in. 

Verdigris might have made a good soldier, but Vace isn’t sure what he is. There is a sea change happening in the Garrison, and he can’t quite tell what direction the wind is blowing. What he has noticed is that Verdigris still wears a standard-issue holster, but instead of a service rifle there appears to a set of scissors and a torch visible at his thigh, a small bag with a medical plus sign strapped to his side.

He finishes his tea, places it in the kitchenette’s small steriliser and heads to Rhett’s office. Rhett is sitting at his desk, a mug in one hand and a holoscreen off to one side. 

“Please sit,” Rhett says, gesturing to an empty chair. Vace does so, sitting upright while Rhett massages his temples. In the last few years, Rhett’s close-cropped hair has turned entirely white, and he frequently looks tired.

“Sir,” Vace ventures, “you said you had a matter to discuss.”

Rhett nods, setting the mug aside. “I think it might be for the best if you step down from the position of Second Security Officer,” he replies. There’s no anger in his tone, nor remonstration. Just a statement of fact. 

Vace blinks, from behind the customary sheet of plastic wrap. “What?”

Distantly, Vace realises he knew this was coming. In retrospect, he was Rhett’s second choice, behind Anemone. Anemone, who took the first chance she got to be something other than a soldier. 

“I’m going to do you the service of honesty,” Rhett rubs his jaw, “Vace, you don’t have the confidence of the Garrison. The officers tolerate you, but they don’t trust you. You’ve straightened out over the last two years, but it’s becoming increasingly clear that when I retire I’ll be leaving you in an intolerable situation.”

Vace says nothing. Rhett regards him for a long moment, mouth pulling sideways in a grimace. “I don’t enjoy setting people up to fail,” he says after a moment, “leading a group of people who don’t trust your leadership. And your relationships with the rest of the council are frosty, to say the least. Being ousted from the position of Chief of Security by your own people would likely end your career.”

“And stepping down wouldn’t?” Vace manages, voice hollow.

Rhett grimaces. “Stepping down is an exit on your own terms. You’d still be a senior Security Officer, with all that entails. I have a possible successor, but it would be preferable for everyone involved if there was…a smooth handover.”

He’s been negotiated into a corner, and on the one hand he despises Rhett for it, but on the other…he’s tired. Rhett is right. The Garrison don’t trust him – he’s never quite shaken off being Lum’s favourite attack dog, never quite shaken off the damage done by Anemone leaving him or playing no part – worse than no part – in achieving peace. 

And wouldn’t it be nice, to be free of the Council’s disapproving stares, of the Garrison looking to him and seeing only his failures?

“Who,” Vace says woodenly, “is your choice of successor?”

Rhett considers him for a moment, then says “Semiotic put a plan to restructure the Garrison on my desk to discuss between us. I don’t agree with all of her points, but practically and politically she’s a sound option. She’s a veteran soldier, which will appeal to many Helio traditionalists, and her strategies marry Helio sensibilities to Stratospheric ideals.” 

Vace knows Semiotic, although not well. She’s older than he is by five or six years, a stout and laconic woman. “Why now, and not earlier?”

Rhett half-laughs. “She and her wife were starting a family. Her eldest is, I believe, seven at the end of this year, and her youngest is one.”

Yes. He sees it now. A Heliopause solider, married with three children, able to unite the two colonies and square their differences to usher the Garrison back to glory. He just always pictured himself as that person, and he knows now he will never be.

“When would you recommend beginning handover?” Vace says, watching himself from a distance. He sounds calm, like he’s taking the news well.

Rhett half-shrugs. “I was going to suggest we announce your stepping down during Vertumnalia,” he says, “which gives Semiotic time to settle into the role before I announce my retirement at the end of this year. A fresh start, and a complete changing of the guard.”

Vertumnalia is the end of this month. Soon. Would it be a relief, no longer to be untrustworthy? To make it look like this was a decision?

“That is reasonable,” Vace replies, and tries to ignore the relief in Rhett’s eyes.

–

There are times Vace realises all over again that the Stratos were raised differently, and one of those times is always Dust. As the weather gets hotter, they just take clothing off, men and women alike. You can tell who’s with the Stratospheric or who started adopting their ways of thinking early by how matter-of-fact they are about stripping off. The Helios either swelter in their clothes, or doff them with none of the easy unselfconsciousness of those who grew up on the Stratospheric. 

He’s walking around the edge of the commons and marinating unhappily in his own sweat when Nougat jogs up to him, sweaty and smeared with streaks of sunscreen. “Oi,” she says, “you’ve got two brain cells to knock together, right? You got half an hour? There’s a bribe, if it matters.”

“What’s the job?” Vace asks, because he really doesn’t have anything else to do. He’s just worked a full shift, but unless he wants to go to the bar and get drunk on his own or go home to sit in his quarters there’s not really anything else to do.

Nougat brightens, bouncing on her feet. She’s a solid, muscular young woman in shorts and a sports bra, smudges of dirt on her knees and under her fingernails. “It’s the setup for Vertumnalia,” she says, “we just need someone to help us run through sound check. It was supposed to be Nomi, but Theorem’s given something he caught at the creche to Rex so they’re busy. You just need to hit some buttons, and when we’re finished the kitchens have promised us ice cream for the trouble.”

He doesn’t have anything else to do, and as much as he is loath to admit it, the prospect of hitting some buttons in exchange for ice cream sounds appealing. “This better not take any longer than half an hour,” Vace says, and follows Nougat to the area where the stage is being set up for Vertumnalia. 

There’s a slim, wiry young man with a short shock of red curls — Cirrus — wearing a pair of shorts and work boots and nothing else, carrying the end of a cable. There’s only so far holotechnology can go, and a good sound system still runs on physical connections more than anything. Vace recalls too late that Nougat is chummy with Anemone’s family, just in time to watch Nimbus — blessedly fully dressed in cargo pants and a t-shirt — lean out of the scaffolding to take the cable.

“Nimbus,” Nougat calls out, “I found a gumby!” 

Both Nimbus and Cirrus turn to look at Vace. Nimbus gives a one-shouldered shrug, his other arm hanging onto the scaffolding, then turns to his brother and says “Cirrus, gimme that cable and show Vace where the desk is?”

“Need help getting it up there?” Nougat asks, heading over to the stage scaffolding. Nimbus shakes his head, looks up into the scaffold, then kicks out into empty space, using his weight to propel himself into a spin and using the momentum to fling himself into the depths of the scaffolding with a swish of tail. 

Cirrus, a bland smile plastered on his face, directs Vace to the sound desk. A few colonists are lingering as they walk past, eyeing up Cirrus’s bare torso appreciatively. Cirrus is pretty, something he most often heard in a sneer – pretty boy thinks he’s too good to fight, pretty boy wants to fuck around with his little instruments instead of doing a real man’s work. But at the same time, the first thing out of their mouth was a comment on his physical beauty regardless.

As soft as some of the Strato men are, and as much as some of the Garrison expended effort proving they’re not like the rest, some of the people watching Cirrus move around sound equipment are the same person who used to disdain him. Vace wonders if their opinion changed, or if the contempt was performative in-group signalling. Certainly, Cirrus is a better prospect now – Second Surveyor, in line to eventually succeed Utopia as a council member.

“We just need to check all the audio outputs one by one,” Cirrus is saying, “if something doesn’t play, Nimbus and Nougat will check the cabling and run some troubleshooting. You just need to switch things on and off and press “play”, and Nimbus and Nougat will do the checking if something doesn’t work.”

Vace lifts an eyebrow. “And what will you be doing?”

“Mostly handing Nimbus and Nougat cables,” Cirrus says dryly, “any heavy lifting, getting heckled.”

“You’re very good at getting heckled,” Chamomile grins, leaning out of the shadows. Vace schools his expression into blankness and his shoulders back down. He hadn’t realised Miles was there, and indeed it’s a moment before he recognises the older man fully. He’s in a tank top and loose trousers, his mass of auburn curls tied up in a ponytail. More jarringly, he’s smiling broadly, an expression that makes him look briefly and unsettlingly like Anemone. 

Cirrus rolls his eyes expressively. “It’s for morale,” he replies, “and Miles here has already checked the stage is set up per instructions, so now he gets to take a load off. Or at least he should, if he knows what’s good for him.”

Miles, sitting in the temporary bleachers, grins. “I’ll behave,” he says fondly, “now begone, scamp. Nougat’s nearly finished with that cable.”

If Vace didn’t know better, he’d assume the man who cornered him that night on the Heliopause the this one were two entirely different people. Miles looks relaxed and at ease, and upon closer inspection he’s doing something with his hands – knitting a small blanket in shades of soft green and off-white, patterned in zig zags.

“It’s a baby blanket,” Miles says without looking up from his knitting needles, “I’m due to become a grandfather in the new year. Cumulus broke the news last week.”

“Oh,” Vace says, because there’s nothing he can say to that and he’s tired and poaching in his own sweat. He can’t quite reconcile the cool and menacing presence in his doorway all those years ago – has it really been six? – with this man knitting a blanket, with all the ease of someone who does it all the time. 

Instead, he takes the opportunity to look at Chamomile properly. He looks like Anemone in some ways – the sharp nose, the intense violet of his eyes – but in others, he’s the spitting image of the few photographs Vace has seen of Kombucha. Miles is somewhere around six foot and wiry and straight-backed, strangely regal and out-of-place in the temporary bleachers. There’s a tattoo on his upper arm – an hourglass-shaped terrarium, the greenery inside having grown so thick and so wild that it has breached the side of the glass and begun to escape. It’s faded, the colours bleached by time, and there’s text above and below too small for Vace to make out. 

A strange shadow spreads across his shoulder and the side of his neck, and with a jolt Vace realises it’s an old plasrifle burn, stretching from where his neck joins his shoulder and spreading across his collarbone to taper off about where it would be covered by a shirtsleeve. The skin is distorted and twisted, and Vace wonders where Miles would have got a wound like that. 

It’s not a recent injury, and there was a twenty year period on board the Stratospheric where firing a live plasgun would be a one way trip to explosive decompression. Maybe Miles is older than he realises, because he can’t have been older than twenty-five when he left Earth.

Nimbus leans out of the scaffolding and waves at him. “Vace,” he shouts, and Vace realises with an awful jolt that Nimbus just looks like a squarer and more animated version of Miles, “could you test the first set of speakers, please?”

“Out of curiosity,” Cirrus calls out from the ground, “what are they connected to?”

“Don’t worry about it,” Nimbus replies breezily, slinging a leg over the scaffolding, apparently unbothered by being at least two storeys off the ground.

Vace finds the relevant switches and flips them. Nothing. Experimentally, he tries to turn the volume up. Nothing. Fuck. He feels inexplicably nauseous and lightheaded, and has done ever since he realised two of Anemone’s brothers and her fucking father were here. He wishes he was watching all this from behind plex, but instead he’s painfully aware of his sweat-soaked uniform sticking to the clammy skin of his upper back.

“Nougat,” Miles calls out, “they’re the speakers up top, right?”

“Yeah, those ones. What’s up, uncle?”

“I can’t see too well, but there’s no heat being generated up there. Should there be?”

Nougat frowns, looking up at the speakers. “Maybe a little, but…Fluffy, you check the cabling on the right, I’ll take the left, and we’ll trace it back to the power source?”

Nimbus, still sitting up in the scaffolding, salutes. Nougat salutes him in return, then takes a running jump at the other set of scaffolding, throwing her weight forward and scaling it with impressive alacrity, muscle visibly shifting in her legs and shoulders. Nimbus unfolds himself more slowly and carefully, stretching langurously before swinging himself up just as Nougat catches up with him.

Cirrus watches them go for a moment, then turns to Miles. “I’ve already told Nimbus this,” he says, “but I need you to keep it quiet from Mom so Milly can be the centre of attention for a bit longer. Richter and I are engaged.”

“You proposed?” Miles asks, looking up from his knitting. Vace stares at the sound-desk without really seeing it, feeling another spike of nausea.

Cirrus rubs the back of his neck sheepishly. “Sort of. I didn’t intend for it to be a proposal, just checking in about how he felt about the idea, but he said a Mid Quiet wedding would be pretty nice and we should look at rings and we’re doing that this evening. Not a proposal exactly, but the end result is I have a fiance, so.”

Miles huffs a laugh. “You like him because he’s straight to the point, Rus,” he points out, “congratulations. I’ll leave telling Anne up to you.”

At the edge of Vace’s field of vision, Nougat drops back down to the ground and pads out the back of stage. A few minutes later, there’s a muffled shout of “Got you, fucker!”. Nimbus starts, then loses his seat with a yelp, booted feet flailing into empty space as he lunges and grabs a strut, feet dangling and tail fluffed up like a bottlebrush.

Vace lurches to his feet, and is immediately slammed with a wave of lightheadedness, his vision going dark and blurry for a moment. “He’s got this,” Cirrus says, to no one in particular. He doesn’t look concerned at all, and indeed neither does Nougat, emerging from back of stage dusting her hands off.

Miles sits up a little, nods to himself, then cups his hands to his mouth and hollers “Hang in there, baby!”

Nimbus gives him a look of pure exasperated consternation, tail lashing, and Vace realises immediately that he’s not concerned either. He sits, willing the wave of dizziness to subside.

“Please don’t quote Old Earth motivational posters at me in this trying time,” Nimbus yells, successfully doing a pull up and getting a leg over the strut, “you absolute bastard!”

Miles laughs. “We’re all bastards here,” he says genially, before glancing off to one side and straightening up a little, “and we have visitors! Look lively, all of you. Good afternoon, Milly, Anterograde.” 

Vace thinks Milly is a ridiculous name, but Cumulus carries it off with a certain jovial aplomb, as if daring anyone to try to make an issue of it. “We had a failure with the ice cream,” he announces, “but we have consolation cordial. It’s good cordial, Grady made it.” 

Grady shrugs, hefting a pitcher. Since Vace last saw her, her sheet of rosy hair has been cut to a choppy shoulder-length, stripes of peach and blonde peeking out from under the golden-pink top layer. “Also, electrolytes,” she says, “important in this weather. We’ll find a way to sneak you all a treat later.”

Nougat drapes herself over Grady, resting her chin on top of the much smaller woman’s head. “Graaaaaaady,” she sing-songs, taking the pitcher and draining the last of the water in her canteen so she can fill it up with cordial, “thank you for bringing a precisely me-sized serving of tasty beverage, you’re the best!”

“Watch what you say or I’ll make you guzzle the lot in one go. There’s five litres in that thing,” Grady’s eyes glitter, “that’s about as much blood as is in your body.”

Nimbus has climbed down and wandered over to fill up his own canteen, dumping the last of his water over his head. “You didn’t have to go out of your way,” he smiles at her and Cumulus, “we would have coped.”

“Sure,” Grady tosses her head, “but then I wouldn’t get to snoop. Gimme a sec, I’m going to go make sure Rus gets some, I value his opinion on sweet things more than any of you.”

Grady strides off to corner Cirrus, gesturing with the pitcher, while Milly pats his younger brother on the shoulder. “I think our Anterograde was a little disappointed to find you hadn’t got your kit off even a little.”

“Thank you for bringing Grady here when I’ve been sweating in the sun for hours,” Nimbus says crossly, “I reek. I think this t-shirt is structurally fifty percent sweat. I am disgusting.” 

Milly rolls his eyes. “Woe is you, we’re all sweaty animals here. When are you asking her out? You like her, she likes you for some reason even though you’re a giant weenie, come on.”

None of them are acknowledging Vace, which suits him just fine. The air is stifling, he’s hideously aware of his own armpits and the sweat clinging to his back, and he feels inexplicably exhausted and nauseous. 

No, not inexplicably. These people are something Vace wants and can never, ever have. 

Milly and Nimbus have devolved into shoving each other, not with any particular rancour, Nimbus stammering and scrunching his face while Miles looks on in good-natured bemusement. It’s the most discomposed Vace has ever seen him, and he realises abruptly that Nimbus is at the very most, twenty years old. The confident and assured young man in the Garrison equipment shed six months ago exists in the same breath as a teenager mooning after a crush.

Nougat slings an arm around Nimbus’s shoulders, “Actually,” she sing-songs, “she asked him out. They’re going to Rex’s next mo– hey!”

Nimbus promptly seizes Nougat, attempting to clap a hand over her mouth and shouting in dismay as she promptly slobbers over his fingers. He makes a retaliatory attempt to wipe his hand off on her face while Nougat shrieks with laughter, and after a few seconds they both go toppling into the dust, grappling and shouting. 

Miles and Milly exchange eyerolls. “Rex’s next movie night is in three weeks,” Miles observes, “after Vertumnalia, but plenty of time for our Nimbus to work himself up to an apoplexy, perhaps a hernia.”

Cumulus sighs heavily, scratching the back of his head. “Tell me about it – hey, she’s finished with Rus, stop slapfighting in the dirt if you're so worried about looking uncool.”

Vace watches, mortifyingly aware of how damp and clammy his everything is, while Grady ambles up to the two much-larger teenagers apparently attempting spiritedly to mash each others faces into the dust and considers them for a long moment. She nods thoughtfully, more to herself than anyone, then unscrews the top of her canteen and unceremoniously dumps water over both of them.

“Grady,” Nougat exclaims, while Nimbus hisses at no one in particular, “you’re a meanie!”

Miles laughs, allowing Grady to fill up his canteen and then taking a swig. “Anterograde gives the both of you the respect you are due,” he says, shaking his head.

Grady, meanwhile, turns her head towards Vace and then silently offers him the pitcher. Vace shakes his head, sloshing his near-full canteen at her. He doesn’t want…whatever it is in that pitcher.

Instead of going away, however, Grady gives him an assessing look, a tiny frown playing at the edges of her mouth. “Open your mouth,” she orders, taking another step towards him.

Unthinkingly and humiliatingly, Vace nearly does it. Instead, he catches himself just as he’s about to comply, and says “What did you just say?”

"I said," Grady replies, as if he’s being a bit thick, "open your mouth." 

Vace stares at her, completely bewildered and increasingly affronted. Did he hear that wrong twice? Grady is tiny, she wouldn't even clear his shoulder if they both were standing, but she's looking at him like Plan B is to grab his jaw and force his mouth open like an animal being given a tablet.

He stands up, and immediately his vision goes dark and fuzzy. Distantly, he hears Grady say “Uncle Miles, help-” and then he’s back in his chair, and someone is pressing a canteen into his shaking hands. A warm, callused hand rests on his forehead for a half second. 

“Get him into the shade,” Cirrus says, and Vace muzzily thinks who?

His vision won’t focus, the world listing dangerously. “Drink,” Grady is saying, “you have heat exhaustion. Newton’s apple, have you drunk any water today?

He had water when he woke up, he wants to argue, and a cup of blep at the start of his shift, and another at lunchtime, and…blep counts as water, right?

Wait, no, this is stupid. He’s not going to humiliatingly argue this point. He’s not an idiot. 

“What is with you people and sweating your pits out?” Cirrus grumbles, “Grady, explain?”

Grady shrugs, dark eyes fixed on Vace. “Military training includes enduring discomfort for the sake of formality,” she says, “and we have stronger and more restrictive taboos surrounding nudity, particularly for women. When I started genetech it suddenly wasn't fine for me to go shirtless even at home, so…we're prudes, is our problem.”

Vace eyes Grady for a moment – from looking at her, he wouldn’t have realised she was raised on the Heliopause. She’s as lightly dressed as any Strato in a cold-shoulder top and loose trousers, but now he’s heard her speak she has the clean and perfect diction of the more educated denizens of the ship he grew up on. 

“You need to drink all of that,” Cirrus says, looking significantly at Vace’s canteen, “then you’ll feel better. Stay put until then.” 

The canteen has something faintly sweet in it, rather than water. Electrolytes. Face burning in humiliation, Vace takes another sip.

“I’ll take the sound desk,” Nimbus says, “I’m not so much a meathead I can’t push buttons on command.”

Cirrus claps his brother on the shoulder, as Nimbus sits down at the sound desk. “One of the plugs was a bit loose,” Nougat says, “I shoved it in the rest of the way."

“Shoved it in you say,” Nimbus says dryly, “now we know who to blame if we have further equipment issues.”

“Insufficient foreplay,” Cumulus agrees, “is the cause of many equipment issues.” 

Vace takes another gulp of electrolyte solution. Disgustingly, he feels significantly better. “Are you going to exchange innuendo all afternoon,” he grumbles, through a mouthful of cotton wool, “or are you going to run the checks?”

“In whose end-o?” Grady replies in a convincing impression of innocence, and Nimbus claps a hand over his mouth to suppress a snort. She immediately turns and gives him a sharp little smile, while Nimbus’ eyes crinkle in obvious mirth.

“The outlet out back of stage,” Nougat grins, “we’ve been over this. He has a point though, the sooner we get this done the sooner we can all hit the showers. And boy, do I need a fuggin’ shower.”

“You’re the one who decided an interlude of rolling around in the dust was a great idea,” Vace interjects, pointing at Nougat, who immediately feigns an exaggerated guileless expression. 

Nimbus cracks his knuckles, tail twitching. “Shakes the brain cells loose,” he winks, “shall we find out if these are working?”

“I’m suddenly very worried about what audio output those are hooked up to,” Cirrus muses, stroking his chin.

“I said, don’t worry about it,” Nimbus replies, before flipping a switch. 

For a second, there’s silence, and both Nimbus and Nougat’s pointy ears flatten the smallest amount. Then abruptly, as if waiting for the appropriately dramatic moment, fast-paced music bursts out of the speakers. Cumulus whoops, and Nougat promptly grabs Grady and spins her around, yelling “We did it!” gleefully.

“--picks me up, puts me down, chews me up, spits me out, picks me up-”

With a start, Vace realises not all the singers are recorded. Miles and Nimbus are both singing along – he’s definitely heard Miles’ eerie tenor before, and Nimbus has the same scratchy timbre at a much deeper pitch, strangely sonorous for such a softly-spoken young man. 

There’s a pang of…something. He barely remembers what Edifice looked or sounded like. Is there anyone who looks at him now and sees the face of a man none of them seem to miss?

Is there anyone who looks at him and sees Ardence instead? 

Nimbus cuts the music, briefly smiling fondly at Nougat and Grady, who are clutching each other and laughing. “Don’t get too excited now,” he calls out, “we have more outputs to check.”

Blessedly, every other audio output works exactly as expected. Vace’s canteen is empty by the time Nimbus stands up, sweaty hair escaping its clip. “We’re good?” Cirrus asks, and Nimbus nods. 

“Thank fuck, I have a dinner date with Richter tonight and I was worrying I wouldn’t get time to shower,” Cirrus sighs, “I’ve been slathering myself in sunblock all day and I’m pretty sure I got burned anyway.” 

“Put a damn shirt on, then,” Vace says mildly, “before your pasty backside blinds half the colony.”

Grady lifts an eyebrow at him. “I see you’re feeling amore chipper,” she smirks, “I’ll be refilling your canteen with the good stuff now.”

Vace allows Grady to take his canteen and fill it with pale liquid, before handing it back to him. It’s sweet, but with a pleasantly bitter undertone, and there’s something almost spicy-tasting in it that he can’t identify.

“Good,” he says, and Grady nods and wanders off towards Nimbus and Nougat, clearly finished with him. He hears them talking, something about the bar – Nimbus and Nougat are cuddling, but not in a way that makes him think dating. There’s a casual familiarity there that reminds him of Anemone and Sol, an awful ease that makes him momentarily sick with envy. They’re both looking at Grady like she’s the most interesting person in the world – Nimbus with an intent, grave-faced expression, and Nougat with a broad and delighted grin. 

The group begin to disperse, Grady and Cumulus to the kitchens, Nimbus and Nougat off towards one of the Quarters blocks. Cirrus walks off into the arms of a shorter, dark-skinned man with arms like tree trunks, and Vace hears the man say “Rus, you always forget your neck,” before the two of them walk away. He doesn’t see Chamomile leave at all – he just turns around, and he’s no longer there.

It’s not until later, eating dinner in the canteen, that Vace realises that not once during that whole afternoon did he feel like he wasn’t really there, looking at the laughter and banter from the other side of a sheet of plex. 

He was there. There as an outsider, perhaps, but…there. Present. He can’t remember the last time he spent time with a group of people where he didn’t feel either that they weren’t real, or that he wasn’t. And it was Anemone’s family, who no doubt fucking hate him. 

Pathetic. Fucking pathetic.

–

Vertumnalia gets bigger every year. Despite himself, Vace kind of likes it. Every form of human ingenuity is displayed proudly and lauded – the younger colonists compete to showcase their talents, and the entire colony is taken over by stalls of people trading kudos or other goods and services for festival food, art, and other small luxuries. 

He doesn’t really want any of it, but he finds himself drawn into a tent run by a tall young woman in Expeditions gear, looking at a surprisingly beautiful chart of the stars above the colony. It’s rendered on inky-dark background, the stars tiny jewelled pinpricks with their names written in a spidery hand, and the suggestion of a sunrise or sunset at the very bottom of the page. 

It’s a frivolous thing, impractically large, and he has no idea how he would fit it into his small quarters. But he finds himself swiping some Kudos across to the woman, who tells him the framed chart will be delivered to his quarters after the festival so he doesn’t have to carry it around. 

He sits down to watch the competitions – Nimbus and Rex trade off emceeing duties as the colony’s youth perform comedy routines, choreography, and to his surprise Digby takes the stage and plays guitar and sings to an appreciative crowd. Cirrus wins the bake-off by a difference of a single point, and insists on taking a photo with a bemused Grady, who seems legitimately surprised by how close she came to winning. 

Anemone and Nomi run the bot wrestling, which he has to admit is a profoundly enjoyable watch – mostly because this year, some elements of the obstacle course don’t have an obvious solution. It’s not just a display of physical prowess, but one of quick thinking and problem solving, and Vace notes the names of some of the contestants to bring to Semiotic’s attention when the festival is over. 

And then, of course, Marz takes the stage. “Thank you, everyone,” she says, “before we break to allow you all to stuff your faces with this year’s frankly magnificent Vertumnalia feast, we have a some changes to the Council to announce.”

She pauses for a second, clearly enjoying the drama. “First Engineer Instance is retiring, after thirty-six years of service, to focus on her research. Second Engineer Tangent has been promoted to First Engineer, and after deliberation by the council and consultation with Engineering I am pleased to announce the appointment of Second Engineer Digitalis.”

“Furthermore, Second Security Officer Olivaceous is stepping down, in order to occupy a new position in the colony’s emergency response. He is being succeeded by Second Security Officer Semiotic. Please join me in showing your appreciation for Instance and Olivaceous’s service on our Council, and in welcoming Digitalis and Semiotic!”

Vace joins the applause, lifting an eyebrow slightly. This is the first he’s hearing of any new position, but when he comes to think of it Rhett and Semiotic must have planned something for him. 

Later, after the crowd has dispersed, Vace sits down on a bench with a container full of festival snacks and a tall glass of beer. He rarely drinks these days, but sometimes he allows himself one drink, and it does not turn into two then three then Vace waking up the next morning feeling sick with the twin forces of drink and shame. 

“Mind if I sit?”

Vace looks up, shading his eyes against the sun. It’s Anemone, with her own glass of beer and her own container of fried food. 

“There are other places to sit,” he says, indicating a nearby empty bench. 

Anemone rolls her eyes and sits down, balancing her container on her knees. “Don’t be dense,” she says, “that wasn’t the question I asked.” 

Why the hell would she – nevermind. “Fine,” Vace grumbles, “I don’t care.”

Anemone chomps down on a samosa with happy abandon. She looks well – her riot of shoulder-length curls has been pulled haphazardly into a clip, spilling wild strands in all directions, and her face has filled out a little. She looks…not softer, not exactly, but real. More real than she ever was when they were together.

Her violet gaze is as steady and merciless as a plasrifle sight. Stars, he was such a fucking fool for ever thinking he could own her.

"Are you okay?"

Vace coughs, thumping himself on the chest. "Sorry?"

Anemone gives him a look of consternation, mouth twisting. "The Vace I knew would only have given up a potential council if it was pried out of his cold dead hands," she says, "you wanted to be Chief of Security so badly."

"Yeah, well," Vace grumbles, "you're the one who said I could be someone else."

Silence. Silence had been his weapon, once, but Anemone wields it far better than he ever could. Anemone, merciless as an angel, as kind as a headshot.

"So," Anemone says, gaze pinning him in place, caught in the headlights a moment before impact, "who are you now?"

I don't know. "Why the fuck do you care?" Vace tears his gaze away from Anemone to look out at the colony. He can still feel it, like Anemone is peeling the skin and muscle away from his ribcage with her gaze alone. He's never felt more naked.

"Answer the question," Anemone scowls at him, "literally either of them."

He could tell her the truth. He wants, so badly, to tell her the truth. She's already abandoned him once. What's the worst she could do?

(-she could tell everyone, and then they would know not even your parents loved you-)

Vace says nothing. Anemone exhales loudly through her nose, wiping her hands on a napkin. "I don't know why I bother," she sighs, "but you know you can talk to me, right?"

What? No. "Anemone," the name feels so foreign in his mouth, "why the fuck would I do that?"

Anemone looks up at him keenly, and he focuses on the spot between her eyebrows (look at me when I'm talking to you) rather than meet her eyes. "I don't know why I bother," she repeats, more to herself than to him, standing up and picking up her food.

Thank fucking stars, she's leaving. Vace conceals a sigh of relief, turning his attention back to his own pilfered snacks.

"Maybe this new person you are," Anemone calls over her shoulder, "could be someone I can forgive."

And then she heads off, leaving Vace paralyzed in his seat, watching her go.

mid dust, year 16 post landing

The following week, Vace walks into the bar to find Ampersand sitting at an empty table, head resting on the surface next to an untouched glass of beer, in a posture of comprehensive dejection. Perplexed, he pulls out the chair next to them and sits down.

"Piss off," Percy says, with a complete lack of vehemence or conviction.

Vace considers this idea for a moment. "Say it like you mean it and I might," he replies, "this is embarrassing behaviour. Sit up, soldier."

Percy sits up, glowering. It's not very effective, unfortunately — there's no real force behind it, and Percy is blandly handsome, so they mostly just look pouty.

"The fuck are you sulking about?" Vace asks, propping his elbows on the table. He's not even sure why he's asking. He and Ampersand aren't friends. He barely knows Ampersand as anything other than Amphetamine's now-abandoned twin.

Ampersand rubs the back of their head. "You know Fraidy Grady?"

Vace vaguely remembers that nickname, at people sneering about a colourless and wide-eyed slip of a girl who could barely get a sentence out. It takes him a moment to connect Fraidy Grady to the direct, dark-eyed girl pressing a canteen into his hands and ordering him to drink.

"Anterograde, you mean? The shortass with the pink and blonde hair?"

Percy nods, pinching the bridge of their nose. "That's her. I asked her on a date."

Vace wrinkles his nose. "Isn't she a bit young? She's what, eighteen?"

"Vace…" Percy opens their mouth, then shuts it with a sharp click, having clearly decided against whatever it was they were about to say.

"Come on, Ampersand," Vace growls, "out with it."

Percy gives him a strange, resigned look, then says "You're one to talk, Anemone was barely sixteen when you started flirting with her and you were…nineteen, twenty? You gotta say that's a bit iffy."

Vace blinks. He'd just never thought about it. Anemone had paid attention to him, had been willing to do anything for his attention, which was what had mattered. Eager to impress, and to be impressed by him. Which was likely a product of the fact he was her first boyfriend, first of everything.

And he had wanted that. Wanted someone who was impressed by him, who would think themselves lucky, who wouldn't tell him no. Someone who would adore him unreservedly, who would give him everything he wanted. Vace grimaces, swallowing a sudden surge of self-loathing. Pathetic. She left you anyway, as you deserve.

Percy is starting to squirm a bit. There should be satisfaction in their fear of reprisal, but he just feels tired. "Yes," he says briefly, "which is why you should fucking listen to me when I say if you are lucky she'll blow you off for being a creep."

"She said no," Percy sighs, "she's just some barmaid, it's not like she's got a queue out the door. I can't even get a date with fucking Fraidy Grady. Pathetic."

Vace stares at him for a moment. "Let me get this straight," he says, "you asked a teenager out on a pity date because you think she doesn't have any other prospects and thus wouldn't say no, and then you got rejected, and now you're sulking?"

"It sounds bad when you say it like that," Percy rubs their jaw, looking chastened, "and she's not — she's twenty one in a couple of months?"

"Uh huh," Vace replies, "it sounds bad because it is bad. Asking someone on a pity date is embarrassing, Ampersand. Did she say why she rejected you?"

Percy shakes their head. "Just said she wasn't interested. If you ask me, it's a little embarrassing she thinks she can be choosy."

Vace lifts an eyebrow. "If you think so little of her, why'd you ask her out? Because you thought she'd be so desperate as to settle for your pathetic arse?"

Percy looks at him, jaw tight. "Not all of us have no deficit of attention," they say resentfully, "maybe I wanted to be important to someone for a second."

"You self absorbed little sad sack," Vace retorts, "a deficit of attention is right. If you got your head out of your ass, you would know full well Anterograde has a more lively social life than I do. Should I be worried about you trying to pity-fuck me next?"

Percy looks the most taken aback anyone has ever looked. "No," they say, "what the fuck?"

"Am I not good enough for you or something?" Vace leers, grinning slightly. Percy looks at him like an animal backed into a corner, clearly unable to come up with the right thing to say.

I was you once, he thinks, pursuing people who I thought would be grateful I gave them the time of day. If you thought I was beneath you you'd be trying it.

Ampersand is contemptible. Was he ever that small and shameful?

"Uh," Percy stammers, "look, I-"

"Have some fucking self respect," Vace points at them, "shoot your shot with someone you actually think is a catch like a fucking adult instead of sulking that someone you think can't be choosy didn't choose you."

Percy regards him silently for a long moment. "Piss off," they reply, with an ounce more conviction.

"Fine, wallow in self pity then," Vace sneers, rising from the table and stalking off into the sultry Dust evening.

When he returns to his dark and empty quarters, there is a flat recyclable delivery box from the depot leaning up against his door, adorned with a cream and blue ribbon tied into a droopy bow and a card addressed to Olivaceous.

Vace hefts the box curiously, grunting in surprise at its weight, and carries it into his quarters. The sender, a Katabasis, is not a name he recognises. The young woman from Vertumnalia, maybe.

He carefully undoes the ribbon and opens the box, sliding the contents out a few inches.

It's the painted star chart, in a stark black frame and bordered by black card, throwing the sharp white pinpricks of the stars and the suggestion of a sunrise or sunset at the bottom into sharp relief. Close up, the deep velvety blue of the sky has variation, nearly black at the top, shading to a deep purplish indigo.

Vace pulls the chart all the way out and stares at it. Looking at it, something turns nauseatingly in his chest. It's beautiful, and he loves it, and he has no idea where the fuck he's going to put it.

His quarters are small, and they're full of…things that mattered to him, once. Vace sets the frame down on the bed, stands, and wanders over to a set of shelves covered in trophies from the rifle range and the sparring ring. They're all an absolute minimum of ten years old.

One by one, he takes the trophies and throws them in the trash, then takes the shelves off their brackets. It only takes a little wiggling to remove those too, and the adhesive strips that kept them on the wall for fifteen years.

He picks up the chart, then puts it down and picks up the box. This mysterious "Katabasis" had indeed included a hook, and an adhesive strip. How thoughtful.

Vace holds the chart up against the wall, moves it a little higher, and uses a stub of pencil unearthed from his mess of a desk to mark where he wants the frame to sit and a ruler (since when did he own a physical fucking ruler?) to figure out where to place the hook.

Adhesive strip. Hook. Vace picks up the frame and carefully aligns it with the hook, making sure it's sitting secure before he takes his hands away.

The chart looks at him. Without thinking, he reaches out and adjusts it the tiniest amount, then steps away to look at it. There's a glimmer of — something. Something flickers in his chest, verging on painfully.

These are his quarters, at least in theory, but this is the first thing that feels like it belongs to him. Everything else here belongs to a different man.

It occurs to Vace, suddenly, that he doesn't need to keep any of it.

Trophies, old birthday presents, all of it goes in the bin to be walked down to the recycling. Clothes he no longer fits, a digital photo frame that used to hold a photograph of Nemmie, a hunting trophy are all swept away.

After the third trip down to the recycler, Vace picks up a little hologram projector, and turns it on. An image of the Heliopause in 3D flickers into being, juddering occasionally.

He remembers this thing. He used it as a nightlight. He'd stopped when he moved into the juvenile barracks, because it had seemed like a stupid kiddie thing and the damn thing had never come right after Edifice had swept it onto the floor in one of his drunken rages. But he'd never been able to bring himself to throw it away.

He could probably fix it. It's a trivial, frivolous thing, probably not worth bothering with. But…

Vace puts the projector on his newly-emptied nightstand, and turns his attention to his neglected desk.

mid wet, year 16 post landing

It turns out, Semiotic had meant it when she said he was stepping into a new role.

Semiotic has spent months interviewing every member of the Garrison in order to inform her plans, and begrudgingly Vace concedes she's onto something. The start of the year marked the colony's first emergency, one they could have been more prepared for.

"Some of the Garrison are already heading in this direction," Semiotic explains, "but I think we need to support them in developing further into colony safety and emergency management. Temperance is suggesting we repurpose some of the Garrison's existing facilities in order to make sure everyone, not just Expeditions and the Garrison, knows how to swim."

Vace frowns. Temperance is barely eighteen, a short and unassuming young man who's friendly with Digby. "It's a good idea," he says, "but you'll need a lot of permits from Command."

Semiotic smiles. "I've already been furnished with the paperwork," she admits, "it's daunting, but my meta says a lot of it is the same thing over and over."

"Your…" Vace lingers over the unfamiliar word, "meta?"

"My wife's wife," Semiotic clarifies, "you remember Patchouli?"

Vace stares flatly while his brain rapidly joins several pieces of information together. "You're married to Castigate, who's married to Patchouli?" he manages eventually, trying to figure out what kind of woman would desire both stout, amiable Semiotic and Patchouli.

"Yeah, I didn't know her well growing up but," a flicker of a smile, "she's a huge help. Do you think you can supply me with all the information necessary for the application?"

Vace suppresses a sigh. More admin, although he admits he knows the Garrison's files better than anyone these days. "I can have them on your desk before the next council meeting," he replies, "with time to spare for you to look them over, ma'am."

Semiotic tips her head. "Don't call me ma'am," she grins, "Mio, or at least Semiotic, please. The other thing is, Digby and Sid are suggesting we start to run classes on basic first aid. I'm happy to sign off and allocate a budget, but we'll need equipment. I'll leave liasing with them on what they're likely to need to you, since you're still in charge of our equipment."

"Consider it done," Vace replies, choking on ma'am. Semiotic is his superior, and from the looks of things she has a plan that will shape the Garrison for years to come. The sea change is here — nobody wants to be a solider in peacetime, but first aid classes and emergency preparedness feel useful, will be useful.

Semiotic smiles. "That's all," she says, "although Digby has drawn it to my attention that you haven't had End Of Glow off in five years, so I've wiggled your rosters so you can have that night off, even if you just spend it at home. I'll pull the dawn shift."

Bloody Digby. That's the opposite of what he wants — a whole evening where he has nothing to do except go to Rex's stupid party or lie awake in his quarters. Vace pastes a smile on his face and says "The sacrifices of leadership."

"We're part of the community we protect," Semiotic shrugs, "we can't serve it properly if we hold ourselves apart. See you tomorrow, Vace."

He's been dismissed. Vace rises from his chair, heading out of the Garrison. It's absolutely pouring outside in great sheets, rain pooling in gutters. Miles is standing outside the entrance to the gymnasium, drinking out of an insulated flask. His Expeditions uniform doesn't include sleeves, and the edge of the plasrifle burn curls over the top of his arm, just above the terrarium tattoo.

This time, Vace is close enough to see the text. It's in spidery, graceful handwriting, and reads we all run out of time.

"You can ask about the burn," Miles says conversationally, "you're not the first person to be curious and won't be the last."

Vace pauses. "Were you one of the group's foot soldiers? Like Rhett?" The Vertumna Group had been dangerous rebels, guerillas and spies and cultists, some of them notorious. He would have remembered someone that striking, would have had his attention drawn to them, but Miles had simply slipped under everyone's notice.

Miles huffs a laugh. "No," he says, "I turned seventeen the day we left."

"Then," Vace says slowly, "how—"

"I was a bit young," Miles shrugs, "but I had an enhancement that allowed me to see people trying to approach the compound under the cover of darkness. So I got taught how to shoot, and I took my first lookout shift shortly before I turned fifteen. I wasn't forced to do it, I volunteered. I thought if I got shot protecting Anne, and my crechemates, then that would be a worthwhile use of my life."

A worthwhile use of my life. "You didn't die, though," Vace points out, and it comes out sounding like a question. This man had been prepared to sacrifice himself as a teenager, but here he is now, probably…if Vace's maths is right, he'd be over fifty.

Very abruptly, he wants to know the answer to the question: what did you do when no one needed you to fight and die?

"No," Miles agrees, "but if you never get the chance to throw yourself in front of plas-shot, there's always laundry to fold."

Vace turns to look at him, frowning. "Laundry?"

Miles takes a sip out of the thermos. "Sure. Kid, why do you protect anything?"

Vace knows the answer, but it's not the right answer. To be useful. To be needed, to be necessary, to be important, so they can never discard you—

The corner of Miles' mouth twitches. "Hopefully, because you love it, or at least deem it worth cultivating. I loved my home, and I love it still, I just had to learn to love it differently."

"By… folding laundry," Vace says, unable to keep the skepticisim out of his voice.

Miles gives him a sidelong glance. "Sure. You can only die for the cause once, I can fold sheets in front of a holoshow with Ante or catch up with my kids or grab a post work drink with a friend again and again."

Vace shifts uncomfortably. He had loved the Heliopause, hadn't he? But he'd thought he felt that way about Anemone too, and he hadn't even known her.

He'd wanted to be needed, to be indispensable, to be irreplaceable and important.

Isn't that what love is? He tries to imagine himself in front of a holoshow, working his way through a pile of clean laundry with someone, anyone. It feels, instinctively, like desperation — like he's lowered himself to yes, this is how I can best serve you, all I can do for you is a chore, please need me, please need me.

The Heliopause had needed soliders, for a war that's over now, and there is nothing left for him. He is as useless as one of the plasrifles gathering dust behind plex in the equipment shed, a weapon of war in an unlocked cupboard. But there is no locked cupboard for him, no quiet rusting.

"Speaking of which," Chamomile says after a moment, halfway through braiding his waist-length mass of hair into a half-up, "I promised I'd show my face at Salutation's birthday drinks. Cepheid's probably going to try to sucker me into karaoke, wish me luck."

What? "Good…luck," Vace manages, unsure if he's wishing good luck on the singing or on the avoiding singing. Chamomile ties off the braid, throws the thermos into a shoulder bag, then heads off into the direction of the bar, apparently unperturbed by the rain.

Vace stands under the awning, watching him vanish into the gloom. All he ever wanted was to be a solider. When Chamomile had said learn to love it differently, there had been something like relief.

What would it be like, to feel relieved he no longer needs to be a soldier? What would it feel like, to know how to love something differently? He thought he knew what love was — the willingness to die for the cause, to forfeit his life for an imagined spouse and children in return for their adulation and obedience? To follow the script of what makes a success story, and be rewarded with unconditional devotion?

There is, he thinks, something integrally wrong with him, something fundamentally unwell. Maybe it's in the blood. The same thing that had made Ardence or Edifice unable to love their son, rendering him unable to love his home, unable to love Anemone, unable to put his finger on the emotion in Chamomile's voice when he said again and again.

He goes home to his dark and empty quarters, and stares at the star chart on his wall until sleep takes him.

ON BOARD THE HELIOPAUSE, ??? YEARS UNTIL LANDING
turn back
year # post landing
[FRAGMENT LOST], 5 YEARS BEFORE THE HELIOPAUSE LAUNCH
look behind you
i will come back — let me fucking go you brutes — vace — VACE
take my hand

Vace heads down the corridor, booted footsteps ringing off the walls and ceiling. He was going somewhere. It was important. Why doesn't he remember where he was going?

This corridor has been going on for an awfully long time, twisting and turning back on itself. Vace tries one of the doors, and finds it locked.

Nothing else for it. He was doing something important, he was needed somewhere, he just can't remember.

Deep in the bowels of the ship, a woman screams. Vace nearly jumps out of his skin — the sound echoes off the corridor, impossible to track where it began.

Vace stops, trying to place where he is. He's been walking for long enough that he should have found a door, or a stairwell, or — hell, even another person. Where the fuck is he? What was he meant to be doing? Something important. He has to go—

If he found a window or a stairwell he could orient himself, find a map or an indicator of which floor he's on, but there's nothing. Experimentally, he tries a door, waving his holopalm over the lock. It turns green, but the door doesn't slide open.

Another door, but once again it doesn't slide open. The third time, Vace puts his ear to the door, listening for a mechanism. There's the telltale clunk of a lock, but the door stays closed.

The woman screams again. It's not a scream of terror, but a full throated bellow of rage, the howl of someone angry beyond all reason, the furious banshee wail of a trapped animal pushed past fear and into fury.

The voice is familiar. He knows that voice. It's Anemone. It's not Anemone. It's someone who sounds like Anemone, but the longer the noise goes on the more certain he is that whoever or whatever is making that noise it cannot be Anemone.

Vace stands paralysed while the noise goes on without a pause for breath, impossibly sustained, a howl of incandescent fury like a klaxon that goes on forever. All his hair is standing on end.

After what feels like forever, the screaming stops, and somehow that's worse. Whatever he came here for, whatever he needed to do, fuck it. He needs to get out of here. Vace starts speed-walking back the way he came — surely if he retraces his steps, he'll find his way out…

His heart drops into his stomach. He doesn't remember how he got here. If he got there. Did he ever leave? Has he been here this whole time, forever?

Vace turns a corner, hunting desperately for a map or a floor marker. The woman howls again, louder, rusty in the way of someone who is losing their voice, and for a split second Vace hears Patchouli before he shakes his head to clear it.

Nothing. The indicator lights on the door turn green, but none of the doors will fucking open. The screaming goes on and on, except this time it's Rex, aged eleven or so, a bitten-off howl of agony after Vace broke his arm.

No. No, it's definitely a woman, and she sounds closer.

Vace breaks into a run, heart hammering. Anterograde screams in rage, echoing off the walls, impossibly loud and closer again. He turns on his heel and heads back the way he came, running down and down a corridor that seems to go on forever. Is he any closer to the exit? He surely should have found stairs by now— there —

Stairs, down. Only down. He didn't think he was on the top floor, but he must have got turned around. Vace takes them three at a time, looking for a floor marker, anything—

The voice bellows again, but this time there are words in the din, words echoing up the stairs he can't understand, and Vace is struck by the inexplicable knowledge that this place hates him. Not that it wants him gone, but he can feel it's malice, can feel its hatred, and the woman is still fucking screaming—

He runs down the stairs, for lack of anywhere else to go, and the words resolve into something sensical and he knows what she's saying, what they're all saying

LET ME OUT

LET ME OUT

Vace opens his mouth, and regardless of what he intended to say, what emerges is a voice that is not his own screaming LET ME OUT—

glow, year 16 post landing

Vace starts awake, soaked through with sweat, heart pounding. The clock on his holopalm reads just after four in the morning.

He lies back down, then makes a disgusted noise and gets out of bed. His whole body is clammy with sweat, and nauseous with fear, and there's no point trying to get back to sleep. He's too keyed up, and that's without damp sleep clothes and sheets in the equation.

Vace picks up a dirty t-shirt and sweatpants off the floor, as a well as a clean uniform, and bundles the sheets and his pyjamas into a basket to take down to the communal laundries.

He could visit the shower block down the hall, but one of the downsides of continuing to live on the Heliopause is that the showers are frankly shitty. There's a communal bathhouse next to the laundries, and it's early enough that he can probably score a tub and a decent soak while everyone else is still asleep.

Inordinately cheered by the idea of a quiet bath, Vace grabs a bag of toiletries and heads down to the laundries, where much to his surprise Mor is sitting in front of a dryer in an oversized t-shirt and pyjama pants, chin leaning on one hand, clearly half asleep.

"Mor," he says, half-involuntarily. She's almost unrecognisable with her long mohawk pulled into a ponytail, and he realises as he's looking at her that he's never seen her without make-up before now.

Mor has a soft, youthful face — heart shaped, with big dark-grey eyes and dimples. He'd thought she was maybe the same age as Anemone, but looking at her bare-faced it occurs to him she could easily be over thirty, older than he is. "Vace," she says, "just coming off the night shift?"

He's not in uniform. "I wake early," he says, loading his sweaty sheets into a washer, "figured I'd do laundry while no one else was around to hold me up."

"Mm," Mor rubs her eyes, "you mind if I smoke? Bar's open twenty-four hours during Glow, for them that don't bother trying to keep a sleep schedule, so I just knocked off."

Vace wrinkles his nose. He can't stand dizzyweed — he feels like he's watching the world on a holoscreen well enough without assistance. "Whatever," he says, loading his laundry into one of the tubs, "I don't care."

Mor rolls herself a joint, pausing before she lights it. "I've got enough to share," she adds, "if you want."

"I don't," Vace says shortly, and Mor shrugs and lights up. She seems…different, flatter and less sparkly outside the bar, dark eyes cool.

She glances at him and frowns, a little severely. "What're you staring for, never seen a girl get high before?"

"No," Vace frowns back, "just…you're not usually like this."

Mor laughs, exhaling smoke. "It's the job, handsome," she says, in an echo of the honeyed tone he's used to, "you Helio folks are all the same."

"What's that supposed to mean?" Vace bristles at her, shoulders coming up.

There's a pause while Mor takes another draw, leaning back in her chair. "Cause being a Steward is all fun fuzzy stuff like playing hostess in the bar, or cooking, or looking after the tots, it's not real work. Not like being a big tough soldier. What I do is warm and fuzzy and easy, so why would I get tired?"

"I came here to wash sheets, not get scolded," Vace scoffs, folding his arms and staring at his sheets in the wash.

Mor scoffs back at him. "Cry me a river," she says, "or listen to what I'm actually saying. The person I am at work is work. I play my part, same as you play yours. Mine is giving other people space to take a load off, with food and drink and entertainment. I'm not at work right now, though, so I don't have to perform niceness for you or anyone else who never tidies up their empties."

"Wow, fuck you," Vace replies, but with no real rancour.

"Beg for it first, tin solider," Mor replies crisply, eyes crinkling, "you'll need winding up first before I can make any use of you."

Vace laughs, a little disbelievingly. "You think very highly of yourself, Paramour."

The dryer chirps, and Mor unfolds to her feet, stretching langurously in a way she's pretty sure is at least a little for his benefit, then busies herself unloading her dry laundry into a hamper. "Maybe so," she smiles archly over her shoulder, "but it's so interesting who you tough types think is allowed an ego. See you around."

Mor shifts her laundry onto her hip, salutes him with the joint, then saunters off into the dim early morning. Vace checks the time left on the washing machine, then decides he can probably go and have a bath.

Most of the new quarters have showers, but the space necessary for a bath is at a premium. Instead, there's a small bathhouse, with tubs large enough to accommodate Vace easily, separated by privacy. He can't be bothered doing something so indulgent as booking one, but it's likely most of them will be vacant and he can wash up properly.

True enough, all but two of the rooms are vacant. A woman in her forties with green hair is sitting in the anteroom, folding towels, and she nods him through without comment. He can hear someone in one of the rooms, humming cheerfully, and another is occupied by someone grumbling "Babe, how did you get sugar syrup all through your hair?" while a second person chortles mischievously.

Vace fills the tub with water as hot as he can stand, his vision mostly obscured by steam, then scrubs off the sweat and the terror, washes his hair. When he climbs out of the lukewarm water, scrubbed pink all over, he almost feels like a real person.

He dresses in clean clothes — he'll wash the clothes he came in wearing with the rest of his laundry — and wipes steam off the mirror. His hair is unstyled and getting long enough on top to start flopping into his eyes, but he didn't think to bring hair product, and he's not working today anyway.

Huh. Vace looks a little more closely at the mirror, narrowing his eyes. At his temples, the hair on his shaved sides has a few fine threads of grey. Huh. He doesn't look too closely at his own face — he knows what he looks like — but it occurs to him very abruptly that he's aging. There's a permanent line between his eyebrows, some fine creases around eyes and mouth, and now he looks at it his hairline has shifted back a little.

One of these days, he's going to get old. It hadn't felt like something that would or could happen to him.

Outside, Recalcitrance is sitting on a park bench, a little green-haired toddler hanging on to the edge to keep herself upright. The toddler promptly points at him and goes "eee?", dark eyes wide.

"He's all clean," Cal says reassuringly, ruffling the toddler's shock of green hair, "he just look a bath, Vivi."

The toddler shuffles along the bench towards him, a deeply skeptical look on her tiny face, then reaches out with both chubby hands for Vace's leg. "Vivi," Cal says gently, "don't grab. Sorry, she's got the hang of standing and getting to use her hands and she's still learning to keep them to herself."

Vivi pauses, hands curled in front of her, head tilted all the way back to look at his face. Cal is watching her attentively, but unworriedly. Eventually, Vivi sticks her arms in the air expectantly.

"Petal, you can't just ask everyone to carry you," Cal sighs, "especially people you've never met."

Before Vace really comprehends what he's doing, though, he's leaning down to pick the kid up. She's bizarrely warm, and has her own ideas about what position she wants to be in, grabbing a handful of his shirt collar and peering at his face for a moment before wiggling around so she can look at a deeply perplexed and slightly worried-looking Cal.

"You need to support under her butt," Cal mumbles after a moment, clearly at a loss, "like, uh…"

Vace allows Cal to reposition his arm. He has no fucking idea what possessed him, and now he's holding an infant. The inside of his chest does something complicated and awful — Viridescent has no idea who he is, that he and her father have been enemies since long before she was born, and she seems perfectly content examining her surroundings in his arms.

"Auuwa," Vivi says decisively, giving him an assessing look that reminds him very strongly of Sol, before turning around and reaching for Cal. Vace allows Cal to take his daughter from his arms, where she immediately makes a grab for his chin.

"That's your Uncle Vace," Cal tells his daughter, "who was very indulgent with you just now."

Vace's mouth flattens. "She's just a kid," he grumbles, "I'm not going to be shitty to a kid."

"And that's a bad word you shouldn't use," Cal coos at Vivi, shooting Vace a warning look, "only when you're really mad, eh, petal? C'mon, wave bye bye to Uncle Vace and lets go see if we can bring Ren some breakfast."

Vivi waves haphazardly at Vace, then sticks both arms in the air and yells "DOSE!" in childish, unmitigated glee.

"Yeah, toast," Cal replies, vanishing off down the hill towards the canteen.

This sucks. He'd never actually held a kid before, can't imagine himself at any age walking up to a strange adult and reaching up to be held. Had he ever reached out, automatic and unthinking, to Ardence or Edifice? He must have. There must have been a point where he had been as innocent as Viridescent, tiny and fearless.

Edifice had not been very affectionate, and when he had been it had been poisoned by the likelihood of it turning on a dime into rage. He never remembers being held by Ardence at all.

Vace heads back to the laundry, shoves his damp sheets in a dryer, and goes to sit outside. The outside lights are still dim, indicating that's it's not "sunrise" yet, but Glow messes with people's sleep schedules so no small few colonists are up and about. Nimbus, Verdigris, Nougat, Digitalis and Anterograde are sitting on a picnic blanket eating breakfast, and he can see Marz carrying two containers into Engineering.

And outside Command, Patchouli sits with her bony fingers curled around a mug, an incredibly un-Patch-like gentle smile on her face. Her hair is loose, and there's a cozy-looking shawl tucked around her shoulders.

Is there something wrong with him, some essential poison in his blood? Is he simply and inherently sick, and he and Ardence and Edifice did not love each other because they could not?

Before his conscious mind catches up, Vace is standing up, and walking towards Patchouli.

She looks up as he approaches, mouth falling into a flat line and chin lifting. Vace opens his mouth, and words fail him. He stares down at Patchouli, who has risen to her feet, and tries to find the right words to ask what he wants to ask.

Eventually, what comes out of his mouth is "I need your help."

Patch regards him for a long moment. "Command is just about empty," she says, "follow me."

She turns, drawing her shawl around her shoulders, and walks inside Command. The Depot is staffed by a girl of about eighteen with digitigrade paws sticking out of the bottom of her dress, claws clicking on tile. She looks up, mouth tilting.

"Morning Suspension," Patchouli calls out, "Vace and I need to access some records."

The girl — Suspension — nods. "Nimbus hasn't come in yet so there's no blep," she says, "but I made some mint tea if you want a hot drink."

Patch glances at Vace, who shakes his head. "Maybe later if that pot is still going," she says, "thanks, Penny."

The girl salutes, then goes back to her holoscreen. Patch waves her hand over a lock, then holds the door open for Vace.

He steps through, and the door swings shut behind him, cutting out the light of the depot and plunging him and Patch into darkness. He holds his breath, waiting for his eyes to adjust.

As is typical for most of the buildings in the colony during Glow, Command is lit to mimic a day/night cycle, so the only lighting in the corridor is soft blue-white emergency lighting. Vace half-wishes Patch had turned on the main lights, but like hell is he going to stop and ask her to please turn the lights on.

Patch seems not to need the lights, heading deeper into the warren of Command with complete confidence. Vace follows, heart in his mouth, listening to the echo of two sets of booted footsteps off the corridor and telling himself that he's still awake and that awful unplaceable scream isn't about to echo from somewhere deep in Command. He resists the impulse to try one of the doors.

They turn a corner, and dim light spills out of an open door. "Damn," Patch says, "I must have left a light on."

Patch's office is small, but there's a large window, looking out at the still-mostly-sleeping colony. Dominating the room is a standing desk holding a mug, bearing the legend #3 MOM, and the source of the light — a holoframe of Vernacular, another slightly younger child, and a toddler.

"Nic, Lexicon, and Colloquial," Patch says, seeing him look at the photo, "Quill's nearly two already."

"Didn't expect you to be the type to push out babies," Vace says, tearing his eyes away from the frame.

Patch laughs. "I did not push out any of them, although I am biologically Lexi's parent. Wrong gametes, mate."

Oh. Patch must have changed her gender when he was too young to remember — his earliest memories of Patch are of her being in her mid-teens, scrunched and pitiful in her uniform. The woman in front of him feels like someone else entirely, a lifetime removed from that hunched posture and mutinous stare, the familiar planes of her face made strange by the cool light of the holoframe.

She stands in front of the desk and lifts her hands like a conductor, and the holoscreen flares to life, blinding Vace momentarily. The cool light renders Patchouli unearthly, bleached ghostly, crimson eyes dark pits. The holoscreen splits, and splits again as Patch gestures until it's split into four separate instances of the Archives home screen.

As Vace watches, Patch doesn't even bother with the search bar, and in sequence the screens flicker through into a series of filters — He didn't even know the Heliopause had a Court of Appeal, let alone separate ones for military and civilians. Patch is running four separate queries at once, opening case files and dismissing them with quick, elegant movements before he can register the contents of the screen.

He had known Patch's enhancement made her ideal for recordkeeping and information work, but that's not the same as seeing her in her element. She looks serene and completely at ease, expression almost dreamy in the flickering light of her holoscreens.

Eventually, one by one, the screens stop changing. A vs E. An appeal on the decision made in A vs E. A vs The Administration of the Heliopause. Then, finally, a heavily redacted series of letters and numbers.

The third screen, however, appears to have been entirely redacted outside of the title. Patch curses, slamming her hand on the desk. "Fuck," she mumbles, "fuck. Alright."

"What," Vace barks, "can't fucking give me an answer after all?"

Patch says nothing, staring at the screen. "I'm wondering whether it's worth it to risk the Governors trust in me to get you access to this document."

Which means she's thinking about it. "Why the fuck," Vace says eventually, "are you doing this at all?"

There's a long pause. Patch stares at the redacted file, chewing her lip. "Because I was too scared to do anything," she says eventually, "and maybe if I had accepted the consequences of saying this is fucked up, if anyone had stuck their neck out instead of accepting that that was just how things were…"

Vace says nothing at all. Patch's mouth quirks into an ironic little smile. "Nobody talks about Dani," she says softly, "not even to name her with the dead. Because what happened to her was shameful, and if we ignore any of the awful things we allowed to happen we don't have to ask ourselves of we could have done something."

Vace turns to look at the screen, at the redacted text. Ardence vs the Administration of the Heliopause.

"I don't know what's in this file," Patch looks at him, "but my first case as a stenographer was over your custody. That's this one at the bottom right with all the numbers."

Custody? "The fuck are you talking about," Vace scowls, "she ran off."

Patch nods. "She did," she replies, "with her eighteen month old son."

Vace's heart seizes, mind racing. With her eighteen month old son. She had taken him with her.

"I can get a skeleton key," Patch continues, "and access the unredacted file. I will have to answer to the Governor for my misuse of privileges, but the change of ruling power does not change what is just."

Vace tears his eyes away from the holoscreen to look at Patchouli. "Nobody stood up for you either," he says finally.

"No," Patchouli's eyes flicker, the cold light of the holoscreen turning her into a phantasm, "but then I'm still waiting for someone else to do the hard thing. And I'm someone."

Patchouli waves a hand over a compartment in her desk, and it slides back, disgorging the device Vace now recognises as a skeleton key. She presses it to her holopalm, and a moment later a message flashes up on the screen.

ACCESS GRANTED. SKELETON KEY USAGE LOGGED. WELCOME, PATCHOULI.

Patchouli makes another gesture, then produces a datastick. "I will transfer these," she smiles faintly, "and you may read them at your leisure. Perhaps after a nap, you look like absolute shit."

"Fuck off," Vace says almost automatically, watching the little bar indicating a successful transfer progress across the screen, with her eighteen month old son ringing between his ears.

Ardence had tried to take him with her. Unbidden, he thinks of the only photo he's ever seen of himself with his mother — Ardence curled up on the floor like a question mark, blonde and brown hair splayed out around her, smiling down at a tiny chubby face he realises was about the same age that Viridescent is now.

"This is my workplace," Patchouli proffers him the datastick, "you can fuck off."

Vace takes the datastick, tucking it away in a pocket, then looks up to find Nimbus standing in the doorway. His gaze moves slowly from him, to Patch, then he tilts his head.

Patch shakes her head, just for a moment, and Nimbus' mouth does something complicated. "Really?" he says.

"I will accept the consequences as they lie," Patch says quietly, "this is important."

Nimbus regards her for a second that lasts an eternity. "What's this about?"

Patch says nothing, but her face must have given something away. "It's just me and Penny here," he says, "you were training me on accessing privileged archival files."

"What fucking reason," Vace growls, "do you have to lie for me?"

Nimbus' cool violet eyes come to rest on him. If Anemone's gaze is a plasrifle sight, Nimbus is a spotlight. He feels exposed, studied, on display. His skin crawls.

"None," Nimbus replies, "I'm lying for Patch. I trust her ethics, so if she's doing this of her own accord then she has a good reason."

Patch cracks a smile. "Not everything is about you, Olivaceous."

"Fine, fine," Vace grumbles. Between blinks, Nimbus has gone from looming in the doorway to lounging against it, drinking out of a mug that bears the legend A FUN THING TO DO IN THE MORNING IS NOT TALK TO ME, smiling innocuously. Two-faced bastard.

Vace shoulders his way past, scowling, and leaves Command. Behind him, he hears Nimbus go "Tea, auntie?" and Patch reply "Is there blep?"

He remembers to double back for his dry laundry and breakfast, then takes both back to his quarters. Back at his desk, with an open container of savoury porridge at his elbow, Vace loads the contents of the datastick and begins shifting though it.

The first file is a raft of charges laid against Edifice, his father, for a laundry list of offenses — aggravated assault, domestic battery, unlawful imprisonment, intimidation.

It's not surprising reading. Vace tries not to think about Edifice for a reason. His only escape would have been Edifice's death, or getting big enough to fight back, and when he was small it had seemed like it would never happen. And they had been alone together. The only escape had simply been to never go home, staying late to train or study and hope he'd already be asleep when Vace finally came home.

It's all in such clinical language, describing Edifice barricading his then-wife in their shared quarters not once but twice, the locations of strikes and fractures, black eyes, broken ribs, bruised throat. Dates, times, the evidence of medical staff giving Ardence treatment.

Edifice's defense is simply accident or she does not remember correctly or she is lying to cover her own cheating ass.

The judge rules in favour of Ardence.

But Vace knows that eventually she left and did not come back, so he opens the next case. It's an appeal based on new evidence, of what he can't imagine—

—alleges Ardence is mentally incompetent—

Vace stops, and reads a little more closely. Ardence requiring medication had been brought up in the previous file, but unsuccessfully. What changed?

A absconded from their shared quarters with their son O, evading authorities for several days before being located while trying to obtain food from a canteen. O was removed from her custody and placed with temporary carers (henceforth, S and V), and while left unattended in temporary lodging attempted suicide.

Edifice's testimony is that Ardence was volatile, neglectful, and often could not rouse herself to wash or dress, let alone care for her son. That her instability was such that when faced with the possibility of not getting her way, she attempted to end her own life.

That she had a long history of attempting to flee situations that did not suit her. Ardence had run away from her family to a military indenture, run away from her contract and been arrested and returned, and then Edifice had so magnanimously paid off the remainder of her contract so she could marry him, six months before Vace's birth.

Ardence is volatile, unreliable, a liar, she cannot be trusted. There is evidence that at least one of her injuries was self inflicted. Most of the charges are downgraded or dismissed.

Vace wonders what she was thinking, when she left with him. Perhaps that any kind of life would be better than what was waiting for her with Edifice. He'll never be able to ask her.

The custody battle is more of the same. Ardence and Edifice both sought full custody of him, Ardence citing Edifice's violent and controlling behaviour and Edifice citing Ardence's instability, suicide attempts, and time spent in involuntary psychiatric treatment after having deemed not competent to make her own decisions.

"A is willing to revoke the restraining order currently placed on E to allow him visitation, and has offered to do any programmes or engage with any support networks ordered by the court. She also less preferentially supports the placement of O with his current foster parents S and V. The court has deemed this unsuitable, as S and V are currently expecting their first child."

But…there is a disdain for angry, difficult Ardence that leaks through the judgement. A sense of her ingratitude, her difficult behaviour. Custody is awarded to Edifice, with arrangements to be made to ensure Ardence is able to visit her son, pending the lifting of a restraining order. Vace is four years old, too young to remember.

Edifice never told him any of this. Told him Ardence had simply left the both of them, and no one had thought to tell Vace any different. Ardence had still been alive, and he knew nothing about her.

And perhaps, Ardence had been exactly as awful as she was made about to be. But he would have known for himself. There would have been someone other than Edifice, some avenue of escape from the monster in his home, someone else in the dark with him.

The final case is Ardence taking the Administration of the Heliopause to court, arguing that the decision that she was incompetent to make her own decisions was made in error and resulted in impacts to her career and reputation. There are statements of support made by people identified only as S, M, and F.

It contains the only sentence written in Ardence's own words Vace has ever read. I was in crisis, and considering the "help" this place saw fit to provide, of course I didn't go to the authorities.

"What happened to Ardence was shameful," Patch had said.

Vace doesn't remember what her voice sounded like. He'd seen her from a distance, but never heard her speak.

He closes the files, gets up from his chair, and curls up on the bare mattress, pulling the cover over his head like he used to when he was small. Why he thought it would help, he has no idea, he's just hideously aware that his mattress smells kind of rank and is getting saggy in the middle.

Vace's stomach growls. His neglected porridge has got cold, but he suffers through eating it and washes it down with lukewarm sweet tea, and feels marginally better.

What now? Now he knows, and he was supposed to feel — something. Some turning point, some answered question. Not this..hollow anger.

Ardence is dead. Edifice is dead. Hell, the judges on board are both dead, he recognises them from among the list of fatalities. He cannot avenge any of this.

You can’t live your whole life hurting each other, at some point you have to decide to stop, Anemone had said. She'd looked happy barefoot and smeared with glitter, gleaming and vicious and hyperreal, untouchable as the sun.

His heart twists awfully, which is fucking embarassing. Look at him, yearning stupidly for a woman he didn't even bother getting to know when they were lovers.

Instead, Vace picks up the hololamp. He needs to do something with his hands, and taking the damn thing apart to see if it's salvageable is something.

—

End of Glow arrives. Vace buys a pot of eyeshadow from the Depot and pulls out what are supposed to be his nice clothes, although he's going to look underdressed in a plain shirt and pants that would have looked tastefully restrained in the context he grew up in.

There's a clothes swap happening in the lounge, and when he sticks his head in in an attempt to get some peace and quiet he finds Marzipan insistently pressing a silver dress into Digitalis' bemused hands, saying "I'm not giving you a choice in the matter, I can't have anyone else wearing it when you suit it so perfectly," while on one of the couches Temperance is using a curling iron on Suspension's waist-length sheet of pitch-black hair.

Lum is chatting to a man with deep-blue hair worn in cornrows, a slightly awkward smile on his face. He catches sight of Vace, expression brightening, and says something brief to the man before wandering over, already smiling genially.

"Vace," he says, "Mio tells me you're actually attending End of Glow this year! Got your outfit sorted, or are you here to find something?"

Vace shrugs, choosing not to question why Lum might talk about Semiotic in such familiar terms. "I've got something to wear. It's not flashy, but it'll do."

Lum throws his hands up. "My man," he beams, "you should have said something! We're about the same size across the shoulder and some of my stuff's in here. Gimme a second…"

The blue-haired man obligingly moves aside so Lum can go through the pile, looking up at Vace. "Daze," he says, "Lum and I went through basic together, we were just catching up a bit."

"We hated each other," Lum says cheerfully, pulling out a black jacket with gold chain accents and throwing it at Vace, "that should do you. Should have said something earlier. It's End of Glow, Vace, everyone pulls out all the stops."

Daze's eyes crinkle. "So you'll be in the costume contest, then, Baculum?"

"Of course," Lum preens, "I have a participation trophy to defend."

"Shoot for the moon," Daze replies, eyes glittering, "third place."

Vace realises, with abrupt horror, that the two men are flirting, and mumbles an excuse to leave. The jacket, at least, does fit him properly across the shoulders, although it's a little loose around the arms.

When evening comes, Vace eschews the apparently-customary pile of people doing each others makeup and hair in favour of getting ready at home, getting eyeshadow everywhere and spending most of his time debating whether to style his hair as normal or to try something different with it or just to leave it. In the end, he puts just enough product in it to keep it out of his eyes, and then sits awkwardly in his quarters because he doesn't want to be the first one there.

The social feeds are full of people posting outfit pictures — Rex is in a luminescent white suit with a mesh shirt underneath, beaming with his arms around Nomi, Anne in a fluffy pink dress arm in arm with a beaming Tirah in deep violet, a selfie of Digby wearing what appears to be trousers and body glitter and nothing else with Temperance in an open blue-green shirt, captioned "SEARCH AND RESCUE LAD SHIT!"

Vace arrives with the party well underway, although he's not the only one — he can see Marz's posse arriving, as well as a few others. He slips in behind a group of laughing middle-aged colonists and heads straight for a vacant barstool in between a sulky-looking Ampersand and Miles, whose face is unreadable behind a pair of red-tinted sunglasses.

Ampersand grunts a greeting at him, sipping a glass of beer. Vace follows their gaze to the dance floor, where the source of their displeasure becomes more obvious — Grady is slow-dancing with Nimbus, looking equal measures pleased and embarrassed. Vace nods to them, then waves to get Paramour's attention.

"A…Strange Device, thanks," he says, spotting the familiar name on the specials board, "how's the night going?"

"Oh, he has manners," Mor grins toothily, retrieving a tall glass and a bottle of syrup, "it'll get busier, I'm about to take a turn DJing. Should get everyone up and dancing. Uncle Miles, another?"

"Still working on this one, thank you," Miles replies, lifting a half-empty glass of dark beer. He nods briefly to Vace, then goes back to watching the crowd.

Mor places a glass next to him. "Thanks," Vace says, "I haven't been to the beginning of one of these since the first one."

"We ramp up slowly," Mor shrugs, "some people don't turn up until midnight, when it gets really banging. It's good, though, people come in and out, and Cumulus and Askance and Salutation are in charge of what's going to be the mother of all post-party-breakfasts, so if you're not dead on your feet I recommend staying for pancakes and rosti."

It occurs to Vace, at a strange remove, that he could absolutely fuck with a stack of pancakes drenched in syrup. Or with bobberfruit curd. He can't remember the last time he ate something and actually enjoyed it instead of filling his stomach, not since that container of popcorn back in fucking Pollen.

Next to him, Miles lifts the sunglasses, goes "hmm," then drops them back down. "My enhancement makes being in crowds difficult," he answers the question Vace was about to ask, "I see heat as a sort of…halo. Everyone here is glowing."

Vace looks at the crowd, and tries to picture them all alight with body heat, radiant with life. It's an unexpectedly lovely image — a roomful of colonists, drinking and laughing and glowing, glowing.

The music transitions into a faster, more upbeat song, and a tall dark-skinned person with long blue hair pushes through the crowd, grinning broadly. "You," they say, pointing at Miles, "and you slutty sunglasses owe me a dance before this place gets too busy and we both need to go sit outside."

"Cepheid," Miles replies genially, "wouldn't it be easier to stand here and let you step repeatedly on my feet for three to five minutes?"

"I need plausible deniability," Cepheid replies crisply, "come on, the music will drown out the crunching of our joints."

Miles downs the last of his beer, then allows himself to be led to the floor. Vace nurses his drink and people-watches. Patch, Semiotic, and what must be Castigate have taken up a booth, laughing, and he can see Cirrus, Richter, Askance, and Katabasis dancing in amongst the crowd.

There is no wall of plex, no sheet of plastic wrap. As awkward as it is, and as little as he feels like he belongs, he is here.

As people continue to arrive, and the bar gets busier, Vace loads up a plate with snack food and heads outside. Anne and Rhett are sitting at a table with Fluorescent, chatting quietly, and some of the younger colonists are sitting in the grass or on picnic blankets.

Vace walks past them all, heading for the low wall with the view of the growing hole in the colony wall, and swings his legs over to sit. To his surprise, Anterograde is sitting on the other side a metre or two away, with Nimbus's head pillowed comfortably in her lap.

"I don't know, sometimes I miss it," Grady says, "it was miserable, but I knew what I was supposed to be, even if I was failing at it in every possible sense. Failure is less scary if it's the devil you know."

Nimbus makes a thoughtful noise. "Miserable, but familiar?"

"Mm. But I realised I wasn't going to get the choice…to not change. I didn't get the option to stay in stasis, and…it was become Anterograde, or become someone I couldn't stand to be. Change is all there is."

There's a pause, then a short laugh. "Anterograde. I get it. But you can change in an Anterograde way."

"That's the scariest way to change," Grady laughs, "how's the headache?"

Nimbus heaves a dramatic sigh. "Better. I'll need another break after the set, though. C'mon."

Vace stares off at the distant wormhole, half-listening to Nimbus boosting Grady over the wall and then climbing over himself. The wormhole glows, a silent eye over the horizon, surrounded by twinkling stars.

There's movement in the corner of his vision, someone's legs swinging over the wall to sit a short distance away, and Vace turns to look at the new arrival.

It's Rex, carrying two glasses. Silently, he offers one to Vace, and without really understanding why Vace reaches out and accepts it. It's mushwine, strong and smoky. Not his favourite, and also fucking inexplicable.

"I didn't expect to ever see you at one of these," Rex says conversationally, "not after the first one."

Vace pauses, trying to figure out what to say to that. Eventually, he settles on, "Did you know Ardence?"

Rex turns a little to look at him. "No," he says finally, "she was friends with my Dad. My Mom says she didn't really keep in touch after he died."

F. F for Fidelity, who had already been twelve years dead when the ship had crashed. "Alright," Vace says dully, deflating. Someone who knew Ardence well, but they're dead, and can't tell him anything about her.

Rex raises his glass, tilted at the wormhole, in a silent toast — more than likely, to long-dead Fidelity.

"I don't know if I see the point of all this," Vace says eventually, "all this partying to celebrate the end of another year."

Silence. Rex frowns a little, scratching his chin. ""We must have the stubbornness to accept our gladness in the ruthless furnace of the world"," he replies, quiet and thoughtful, ""to make injustice the only measure of our attention is to praise the Devil.""

Vace squints at him. "Fuck you on about?"

"I mean," Rex continues, "that's the point of all this. You have to hang in there and find reasons to be glad to be alive and here with each other. So I'm glad you're here with the rest of us, because it means you're willing to at least try."

"Absolutely no one is glad I'm here," Vace scowls, "you know that and I know that."

Rex shrugs. "If you're determined to be a miserable bastard on such a beautiful night," he says, "I won't argue with you. Enjoy the drink, it's on me."

Then he heads back to the bar, whistling. Vace sips his mushwine and stares up at the wormhole. Behind him, he hears Rex bellow "One more minute until the New Year, folks!"

Behind him, he hears the colonists start to count down. Outside with an glass in his hand and with only the stars to listen, Vace murmurs "five, four, three, two—"

early quiet, year 17 post landing

Eventually, his feet carry him back inside, where he orders another Strange Device and sits down to eat another plate of (very good) snack food and watch the dance floor, which is absolutely seething with people. A few partygoers stop to chat, including Lum and Digby, who expressed disappointment that Vace missed him performing.

Before he realises how much time has passed, Marz is being helped up into a table. She stares solemnly at the crowd, then lifts her glass.

"To the people who didn't make it tonight," she says, "To Aspartame!"

"Kombucha!"

"Arabesque."

"Fidelity!"

"Geranium!"

Ampersand stands, and lifts their glass. "To Amphetamine!" they call out, voice cracking.

For a second, fingers gripped around his half-empty glass, Vace thinks he can't do it.

Knuckles white, he lifts his glass, opens his mouth, and says "Ardence."

There's a half-second of surprised silence, then someone says "Kinematic," and the moment passes. Inexplicably, Vace feels lighter.

The colony runs out of names, as it always does eventually. Vace allows himself to be herded outside with the crowd to watch the sunrise. Cumulus has a trolley of mugs and several urns, and Vace collects a cup of hot tea and tries to find a place to sit.

Eventually, he finds a vacant bench seat, warming his hands on his mug. He catches sight of Ampersand's retreating back, head down, and tears his eyes away.

Marz is sitting on a picnic blanket with Rex, Nomi, and Anemone, smudged and impossibly regal. Nimbus and friends are sprawled in the grass, huddling together and bickering halfheartedly. Further away from the bar, he sees Solace and Cal and Symbiosis, Solace cuddling an alert-looking Viridescent.

The first rays of light cross the horizon, syrupy light crawling in through the hole in the wall and across the commons. There is a ragged cheer as it reaches the colonists, and Vace squints a little as the sun reaches him.

Afterwards, the colonists begin to disperse, chattering, in search of breakfast. Vace stays seated, feeling the faint warmth for a while longer.

Later, Vace draws his blackout curtains and collapses into bed, pleasantly overstuffed and utterly spent. He gazes up at the star chart, feeling a faint flicker of something warm, soft and pallid but present.

Half-asleep and content, Vace reaches out and turns the now-fixed hololamp on, bathing the room in dim orange light. He looks one more time at the tiny glowing ship, silhouetted against the star chart, and then sleep takes him.