Archive of Our Own

The door slams, shaking the entire house, and Apo curls into a tighter ball. She can hear the murmurs of her mother’s voice downstairs, and then her father’s response—louder and harsher. He’s in a bad mood again. She ought to avoid him for a few days.

“Apo, you gonna come out?” her brother asks softly. He’s sitting on their bed, and Apo is hidden beneath it because it’s where she feels safest. Other kids are worried about monsters under the bed; Apo is old enough to know that the monster sleeps in her parents’ bedroom instead.

“No,” she responds, just as quiet. It’s a skill learned from years spent in a house where any slight noise could bring a storm. She doesn’t want to come out just yet, not until she knows that she’s safe.

“Alright,” her brother murmurs. “Do you want something to keep busy with?”

Apo considers. What she really wants is to run, as far away from this poisonous house as she can. To take her mother and brother with her and leave her father in the dust. But her mother would have to be the one to make that decision for them, and her mother refuses to go. Apo gets shushed if she ever even mentions it. So she doesn’t mention it.

She wants to, though. She wants to run as far as possible from the man that says he loves them and then turns around and hits them until they’re black and blue. She wants to escape the look he gets in his eyes sometimes, when he’s drunk and she’s standing in front of him, like he’s seeing more than a father should be. She wants to leave the backwater town he ferried them all to after his debts in the city grew too big to talk his way out of.

More than anything, she wishes she’d never been born as his daughter in the first place. That her brother had never been born his son. That her mother had married someone, anyone, else. Even if it meant that she and her brother wouldn’t be here now.

Apo thinks she would take non-existence over being Sal Kuna’s daughter.

“No,” she whispers. “I’m okay.”

“If you’re sure,” her brother says. “Cover your ears then.”

Apo doesn’t need to ask what he means. She knows. Her hands snake up to clap firmly over her ears, muffling the world around her. It’s something she’s gotten skilled at, over the years.

A few minutes later, the screaming starts, too loud for her hands to block completely. Shrill and pained, and accompanied by the sound of her father’s voice shouting, berating her mother for whatever it is that set him off this time. Underneath it all is the hard smack of a belt hitting skin, and Apo winces in time to it.

There’s a routine to her father coming home from a late night out, a routine embedded in the roots of her dysfunctional little family. Sal Kuna stumbles through the door drunk off his ass, slurring his words and quick to anger. Quicker to use his fists. Apo and her brother are already safely hidden upstairs, Apo tucked under the bed with nothing to distract her except for her thoughts of freedom. Her brother doesn’t hide, and she doesn’t know why. She’s asked him before, but he only said, “Last line of defense,” and tugged on her curls. Instead, he sits on top of their bed with a book that he doesn’t read.

Their mother tries to distract their father until he tired himself out and slinks off to bed. Sometimes she pleads with him, sometimes she doesn’t. She always screams, though, while her children are huddled upstairs trying to drown it out. And then she muffles her sobs until she hears their feet patter down the staircase, sure that the threat is gone and they can come comfort her.

Apo curls in tighter on herself, squeezing her eyes shut. Her mother shrieks, a high, pained sound. Apo feels it in her heart.

She imagines the three of them—her, her mother, her brother. On a horse all together, a fast one with a pretty dappled coat like she’s seen the mayor ride before. The wind flowing through her curls, her mother’s arms securing her in the saddle, her brother’s laugh as they ride into the frontier. Far, far away from her father or anyone who used to know them.

The horse’s hooves kick up sand and dust. Canyons made of red rock and yellow clay pass on either side, the sun a gleaming golden disk in the sky. Apo is free.

(Another scream pierces the air. Apo grinds the heels of her hands into her ears.)

It’s a rare quiet moment in their home, and Apo is three years old. Too little to know why the calm is hard to come by, but old enough to know that Da isn’t there when it is. Too little to know why Da slams his fists into whatever he can reach when he gets angry, but old enough to know that if she’s nearby when he is, she isn’t exempt from it.

There is a bruise on her face, puffy and healing, from just last week. Mama had taken her and her brother down to the train depot to pick out a present each from the new wares coming in from the east. Apo had swung off her arm, excited to get something new for once. She doesn’t often get nice things; everything in their little town is covered in dust and dirt, broken down or tired. They moved out here nine months ago, and Apo and her brother have been counting down the days until they can leave.

They picked out a coloring book, the cover glossy and slippery in their hands. Their brother had chosen a model train car with wheels that moved. He chugged it through the air on their way home while Apo had flipped through the pages of their new book, smiling happily.

It was only when their father came home that the otherwise nice day took a turn for the worse. He’d stomped into the kitchen, Apo sat at the table coloring while her mother set the kettle on the stove. His watery eyes had narrowed. “Wha’s this?”

Apo had looked up, fear crawling through her at his tone. She didn’t want to make him mad, because she knew what happened to her and Mama when he got mad. “It’s—it’s a present. From Mama.”

“A present, huh?” His gaze snapped to her mother, who had gone very still. “Do you think we have the money for that? Do you think I’m made of money?” He took a step closer, and the air in the kitchen turned deadly. “You gonna waste my hard earned pay on frilly shit they don’t need? I ain’t raising some soft-handed wimps!”

“I thought it’d be nice for them to have something new—” Apo’s mother started. Sal Kuna cut her off by spitting in her face.

“That’s what I think of that,” he sneered. “Kids don’t need new shit. Kids need work. Provide for this family ‘stead of being dead weight.”

“She’s three, Sal,” Apo’s mother said.

“She’s an expense we can’t afford,” Sal Kuna said. “And she’ll be worse if you keep this shit up.” He held up the coloring book. Apo wanted to cry. He’d smacked it down on the table in front of her and stormed out without another word.

Apo’s mother wiped the spit off her cheek with her sleeve and went to Apo, carding her hands through brown curls as Apo turned around in her chair to hug her waist.

“I’m sorry, baby,” she murmured. “You’re not a burden on this family.”

Apo breathed in her mother’s scent, mint and soap and wood. Her arms were warm and her dress was soft. Apo felt safe and warm in her embrace. “Why did you marry him?” she mumbled.

Her mother’s hands stilled for a moment before continuing their gentle motions. “I’m sorry, baby,” she whispered, sounding sad. It wasn’t an answer. Apo pushed her face further into her mother’s stomach.

A few days later, Apo had been sitting on the floor with her coloring book when her father had stumbled out of his bedroom. “Wha’s that noise?” he demanded.

Apo looked up, confused. “I didn’t hear anything,” she said.

Wrong answer. His voice twisted into an ugly scowl, and he stalked across the room to grip her by her hair. “You trying to lie to me?”

“N-no,” Apo whimpered shakily, afraid. She wanted to call for her mother or her brother, but she didn’t want to put them in danger.

Sal had grabbed the coloring book from off the floor. “You’re coloring too loud,” he muttered. “Oughta teach you a lesson about being noisy.”

Before Apo could say a single thing, he’d reared his fist back and hit her just under her eye. She screamed, pain bursting across her cheek, and slumped to the ground as he released her. She curled in on herself, clasping both hands to her cheek as she choked on muffled sobs. Her cheek throbbed white hot.

Footsteps pattered down the stairs, and then Apo’s brother was gathering her into his arms and holding her tight. She snuggled into him, searching for comfort and safety, and he tucked his chin over her head, hold tightening protectively.

“He—he—” they choked, words lost in their crying. “He—hic—he—”

“Shh, shh,” he shushed, rocking slightly on his heels. “It’s okay, Apo. It’s okay. You’re okay.”

They buried their face in his shirt, cheek radiating pain through the left side of their face. Their brother kept quietly murmuring false comforts to them. From the other room, they could hear the sounds of Sal moving around, doing whatever he was doing.

Mama was nowhere to be found. Apo wanted their mother right then, to comfort them. Apo wanted their mother to wrap them and their brother up in a warm hug and say it would all be alright, that they would be leaving this town soon and going back to the city, that their father would get better eventually. That it would all get better.

She never did.

Later, once they had stopped crying and their brother had done the best he could for the bruise on their cheek and their mother had kissed it better and apologized until her voice broke for not being there, Apo crept downstairs again and poked their head into the main room.

They found the crumbled, blackened pages of their coloring book in the fire, burnt beyond use.

All of that was a week ago, and Apo’s bruise is healing. It still aches, and now it itches as well. Her mother says it’s part of the healing process and tells her to try to ignore it. Apo complains that it’s hard, and her mother laughs and tells her to try anyway.

“Pass me a black button, baby?” her mother asks, sitting in the rose patterned armchair, one of the few things they brought with them from the city. Apo peers into the basket beside her and shifts through the buttons in it until she finds a black one. She plucks it out and holds it up for her mother, who takes it with a thanks.

Her mother is mending clothes today, and Apo is helping her because she likes being with her mother whenever possible. She’s sitting at her mother’s feet, patiently awaiting requests for buttons or scissors. They don’t talk much, which is alright with her. The silence is peaceful. Apo wishes it could always be like this.

“When’s Da coming home?” she asks.

Her mother’s voice sounds odd when she replies, “I don’t know, baby.”

“I wanna make sure I don’t upset him,” Apo murmurs quietly. The bruise on her cheek sends a dull pulse through her face. “I wanna be good.”

“Oh, baby,” her mother says softly, hand settling on top of her head. “You’re already so good. You don’t need to worry a thing, alright?” She sighs. “Your father is…difficult. But you’re perfect just as you are.”

“Then why doesn’t he love me?” Apo asks, looking up at her mother with childlike curiosity. She knows what love looks like; she learned from Mama and her brother, both of whom love her unconditionally. Mama takes her down to the train depot to get her coloring books and embraces her in the kitchen and lets her help with the sewing. Her brother hugs her when she gets hurt and comforts her after a nightmare and helps her peek over the counter of the general store.

Love doesn’t look like hitting someone. It doesn’t look like burning something of theirs just because it was bothering you.

Her mother looks very sad all of a sudden, and Apo feels bad. “Baby, he loves you,” she says, running gentle hands through Apo’s curls. “He loves you, he just…he can’t show it.”

Apo trusts her mother, so she hums, “Okay,” and goes back to looking through the buttons. She supposes that there are multiple ways to show love. If Mama says Da loves her, then Da must love her, even if he doesn’t show it. She trusts her mother.

The rest of the afternoon passes in idle bliss. Apo feels a warm glow in her chest that she later recognizes as contentment.

The morning is burning hot, the sun a hazy golden disk in the sky, edges wavy with heat. Apo’s never liked the way that the heat way out in the mesa seemed to have a mind of its own, curling into every nook it could.

She dislikes many things about living in the mesa, but after six years, it’s unlikely they’ll ever leave. Sal Kuna’s debts seem to be chasing him down, even in the rundown backwater of Pity. He’s gone most days and comes home drunker than ever late at night, words ready and fists even readier.

Apo learned a long time ago to steer clear of him when he gets like that. Their mother hasn’t.

The front door slams shut and Apo winces. Sal is out, but she still associates that sound with him coming home—or, worse, someone else coming home while he’s there and accidentally drawing his wrath. You get very good at not making much noise when your house is a ticking time bomb, and Apo has long perfected the art of going silent and unseen. Whoever slammed the front door isn’t worried about being quiet.

They pause from putting away the dried breakfast dishes, debating whether or not to go see who it is. Not Mama, surely. She never lets the door slam. But it can’t be their brother, either, because he’s more careful than that, even when Sal isn’t home. So who is it?

Apo sets down the plate they’re holding and slips out of the kitchen. They crack open the front door and peek out to see their mother stepping off the porch. She’s dressed in her pretty green “going out” dress, the one Apo hasn’t seen her wear since they arrived here from the city. She likes to keep it presentable, safe from the dust of Pity.

“Mama?” they ask, closing the door gently behind them as they step into the weak shade of the porch. “Where you goin’?”

Apo’s mother stiffens, and Apo notices she’s carrying a carpet bag. They saw that same carpet bag when they were little, sitting on the overhead rack on the train as they left behind all they’d known for something new. Dread washes over them, ice cold and prickling.

“Mama?” they say again, soft.

Apo’s mother turns around, and they can see the red mark at her hairline where Sal hit her with the poker just the other day. Apo had been lucky enough to escape with only a dizzying blow to the temple, but Mama had gotten the heat of it. Breakfast had been burnt, apparently, and Sal couldn’t stand that.

Apo wishes they had the confidence to fight back, maybe even defend their mother. But they are a nine year old girl with arms skinny from malnourishment, and their father is older and bigger and stronger. Apo’s only strength lies in how fast they are, their ability to escape the problem before it comes for them.

“I’m sorry, baby,” Apo’s mother murmurs.

Apo’s eyes fill with tears, blurring her vision into a multicolored haze of pain and fear. “Where are you going?” she asks again, voice wobbling slightly. She doesn’t like the tone her mother is using, like she’s trying to soften a killing blow. Apo’s heard that tone before, what ranchers and farmers use before they slaughter an animal.

She feels suddenly defensive, like she’ll need to start going at any second.

“I’m sorry,” Mama repeats, and a tear slips past Apo’s lashes to fall down her cheek, followed by another, and another. Once they start, she finds she cannot stop them; they pour out of her like a flood. Her mother wraps her arms around her gently, and Apo breathes in that familiar smell of mint, soap, and wood. It smells like home.

“Don’t go,” she sobs, sinking into the comfort of her. “Please don’t go.”

“I have to, baby,” Apo’s mother murmurs, hands coming up to card through brown curls. “I can’t stay here. I’m sorry, baby. I am.”

“Please—” she chokes out, panicked and desperate, “please, not without me—please don’t go—take me—please, Mama, please—”

“Baby, I wish I could,” her mother whispers, crying now as well. “I wish I could. I’m so sorry. My sweet, brave girl. Look at me.” She pulls back from their embrace to tip Apo’s face up to hers, sticky from tears and snot. “Baby, stay strong, alright? Outlast the storm.”

Apo sniffles, not wanting to let her go so she can’t ever leave. The second she leaves is the second Apo and her brother will be alone, with no one to guard against their father. She can’t let her mother leave. Apo isn’t strong enough to protect her or her brother from Sal, no matter what her mother says. She’s just a nine year old girl.

She’s just a child whose fight or flight instinct always triggers flight, who flinches when people raise voices or fists, who watches every move she makes, wondering if this step will be the one to set him off.

Her father’s eyes have already begun to linger on her in a way she doesn’t like, a way that makes her feel a crawling discomfort different from the usual fear. She’s afraid of the moment he starts to see her as a woman—an object, her mind whispers—rather than his daughter.

Apo is afraid, of her father and the house she lives in, of the monster that sleeps in her parents’ bed and sits in her father’s armchair, of the ticking time bomb that is his temper. She is not strong, or brave, or anything else her mother may think. She is just Apo Kuna, a girl who despises her last name and the man it ties her to.

“Don’t go,” she begs. Her voice nearly cracks with desperation. “Please.”

Apo’s mother looks so impossibly sad. “I love you, baby.”

“No. No, no, no, no, no—” Apo is crying again, words dissolving into sobs and sobs dissolving into great heaving cries that leave her gasping for breath. Some deep well of sorrow has opened in her chest. She feels the gravity of it, collapsing around her heart and pulling everything into it until all she is is this moment, a preserved image of grief and terror.

Mama gives her one last hug and then carefully detaches Apo’s arms from around her waist when she tries to cling, kissing her head and taking one step back, then another. She steps off the porch and into the burning sun of the desert, walking down the dusty lane with her carpetbag in one hand.

Apo doesn’t run after her, even though she wants to. She can’t leave her brother. She watches her mother, though, hoping she might look back one time to say goodbye or maybe even change her mind and come back. Tell Apo that they’ll be leaving together, her and Mama and her brother.

The last thing Apo ever sees of her mother is her green dress as she turns the corner toward the train depot. And then she’s gone, and Apo is alone.

They run upstairs and sob until they throw up. Their brother finds them like that, curled in a ball with tears soaking their cheeks.

“What happened?” he asks, gentle. Apo reaches out with weak arms and grips his hand.

“She left,” they mutter, voice broken from crying. “She left us.”

His face goes hard. “She didn’t.” Apo has never heard him sound so afraid. “Apo, she’ll come back.”

Apo shakes their head. “She said she wasn’t coming back. Said she couldn’t.”

“She won’t leave us,” he says, though he isn’t half as sure as he sounds. “She can’t leave us. She’s our mother.”

Their throat tight, Apo whispers, “She couldn’t take us.” The knowledge twists awfully inside their stomach, making them sick.

“She couldn’t take us?” he repeats.

“That’s what she said. She couldn’t take us.” Apo sniffs and scoots out from under the bed an inch, getting closer to him. “She couldn’t take us.”

Silence settles over the room, thick and awful. They lay like that, a foot apart on the floor, until the front door slams again and they hear the angry sounds of Sal Kuna coming home. Apo and their brother exchange a look. There is no Mama to shield them this time.

For once, hiding under the bed is not enough to protect them from the monster.

Apo wakes up one morning to her brother shaking her arm. “Apo,” he whispers, eyes gleaming in the dim light. “Apo, get up. Come on.”

“Wha’s goin’ on?” she mumbles sleepily, blinking her eyes open. The room is washed in gray, leaching the color out of everything. The sun hasn’t even peeked over the horizon yet; the desert will still be cool and shadowy. Mama woke her and her brother up early once and brought them to the edge of Pity to see the sun rise over the sands and scrub brush. It’s a treasured memory, now, tainted with bitter grief like all memories of Mama.

“Come on,” he whispers, tugging her out of the bed. She goes without complaint, the old wooden planks of the floor rough against her bare feet. He leads her down the rickety stairs and into the kitchen, shushing her when she moves too loudly. “I bought biscuits yesterday,” he tells her proudly, digging around in the pantry for a moment to find where he stashed them from their father. “We can have ‘em with butter and jelly for breakfast.”

Apo claps her hands together happily and then freezes, listening carefully for the sounds of her father waking up. There’s no noise from upstairs, and she eagerly leans forward as her brother holds out his prize: a paper bag that he opens to reveal a dozen biscuits, fluffy and golden, piled on top of one another.

“We can have a picnic for breakfast,” she whispers. “Eat them by the river as the sun comes up.”

Her brother grins. “Apo,” he says, “that is a great idea.”

They creep out the front door, making sure to close it silently so that it won’t wake Sal Kuna. He’s a heavy sleeper, and the whiskey he’d come home stinking of the night before made it even more so, but he’s also constantly paranoid. The snick of a door shutting would wake him up faster than anything, which is sure to result in a fist or two.

Apo bounces excitedly all the way down to the river. She can’t remember the last time she had a special treat like this; Sal spends his money on drinking and cards, and whatever’s left over is for food and anything else they need. Mama was the one who would make cornbread for breakfast some mornings, or give Apo and her brother an extra coin each to pick out a candy at the general store. They haven’t had something nice since she left, almost a year ago.

“Where’d you get the biscuits?” she asks her brother curiously.

“I went down to the depot yesterday. There was a woman selling ‘em, a dozen for a quarter.” He smiles at her like they have a secret to keep. “I thought you deserved a treat.”

“Thank you,” they say happily. He tousles their hair and they shriek, pushing his hand away and darting away from him, further down the path to the river. His laugh cuts through the air, bright and cheerful. Apo feels a warm shine in their chest.

When they get to the river, they settle on the hard packed mud and sand and open the small jars of butter and jelly, careful not to let the food touch the ground and risk dirtying it. They pick biscuits out of the bag and eat them, fingers greasy with butter and sticky with jelly, until they’re full and there are none left. The biscuits are good, too, round and flaky on the inside, crusty on the outside. The sun rises above them, painting the riverbank in blazing oranges and reds, turning the water to a shimmering green the same color as gemstones women in the city wear at their necks.

The frontier can be gorgeous, sometimes; bristlecone pines stretching their branches to an endless, open sky bluer than anything Apo’s ever seen; sloping valleys carved by rivers that have spent hundreds of years flowing the exact same course and managed to move mountains because of it; desert roses that bloom in the summertime in brilliant shades of fuchsia and pink. There are mountains that rise blue in the distance, capped with snow at their peaks, and wildflowers that color the scrubgrass in a rainbow when spring comes.

Apo just wishes that they could see it from the back of a horse or a wagon, the road stretching before them and their mother and brother at their side. Free. Miles away from where their father can hurt them.

They race each other back, kicking up a cloud of dust. Apo’s brother beats them to the house, slapping his hand against the old wooden post that holds up the porch, and grins back at them. They both laugh, giddy with the exhilaration of the morning.

“Come on, if we hurry—” he starts, hopping up the worn boards, quiet as always. Apo freezes behind him as the door swings open, one hand slipping out to grip his sleeve. He shifts in front of her as they stare up at Sal Kuna in the doorframe, scowl darkening his face, listing to one side like his center of gravity is off. His teeth are yellow, his breath carrying the heavy perfume of white liquor. Apo inhales sharply.

She looks up at her brother. “We can hide in the old logger’s cabin,” she says, referring to the abandoned building on the other side of the river.

“It’s alright, Apo. It’ll be alright. It’ll be okay,” he says.

Later, at high noon when the sun is a blazing quarter in the sky, he finds her curled up against a corner of the house, turning a smooth stone over and over in her hands. He crouches next to her. She doesn’t turn to look at him, but she knows from the screaming and the crying that Sal didn’t hold back. She tried to tune out the smack of leather against flesh, but hands clapped over ears will only do so much.

Eventually, Apo had run, trying not to feel like a coward abandoning her brother. She hadn’t gone far; only out here, the sun-warmed planks pressed against her side, splinters rough under her cheek.

“I’m sorry,” she murmurs, voice thick with unshed tears. “I’m sorry I didn’t stop him.”

“You would’ve been beat too,” he says quietly, reassuring. The words are clumsy in his mouth, like his lips are too swollen to speak them properly. “It’s okay, Apo. It’s okay.”

“It’s not,” she insists, glaring viciously at the sand in front of her. “I hate him. I hate him.” She doesn’t dare speak it above a mutter, afraid of him overhearing. Her brother’s hand settles on her shoulder, and the rage in her cools to a simmer.

They sit in silence for a minute, listening to the shrieking of an eagle somewhere in the distance. It’s broken by him saying, “I have to go.”

Apo stills, feeling the same way she did nearly a year ago, stepping out onto that porch to see Mama wearing her green dress and carrying her carpet bag. “No,” she says, a sob breaking her voice in the middle. She wants to find the words to beg him to stay, the ones she couldn’t find with Mama, but nothing comes. In the end, the tempo of her thoughts remains the same desperate refrain: no, no, no, please, no, no, no, please…

“I’m sorry,” he says softly, the same way one speaks to a skittish animal. “I can’t stay here anymore.”

“I can’t either!” she cries, finally whipping her head around to look at him. Bile rises in the back of her throat at the sight of his face, an ugly patchwork of black and yellow and red. His lip is split, a vivid carmine, and both of his eyes are swelling shut rapidly. At this rate, he won’t be able to see out of either of them tomorrow. She knows in an instant there are no words that can keep him here, not in a house of poison. “Please take me with you,” she whispers.

He shakes his head. “I don’t got a lotta money. I couldn’t keep you safe out there.”

“I’m no safer out there than right here,” she shoots back, staring him down. She doesn’t want to know what will happen to her, left alone with a father whose blows get angrier and his hands freer the older she gets. What becomes of her when she has no one left to protect her.

How could a day that started with biscuits and a picnic turn out so terrible?

He looks sad as he says, “You know how to hide. Just curl up under the bed, and it’ll be over soon, okay? You’ll be alright.” She says nothing, and after a moment, he adds, “When you’re older, you’ll understand why I can’t take you.”

Apo wants to throw the stone in their hand at him, wants to scream that they may be young but they aren’t  stupid. Growing up in this house has meant that they weren’t given the luxury of childhood naivety. Their father’s hands grasp the front of their chest and leave red welts on their cheek indiscriminately; they are young, but that doesn’t mean they don’t understand the world’s cruelty. “Like Mama?” they ask, venom dripping from their voice.

He recoils at that, and they feel a little bit bad, but only a little. “I’m sorry,” he says one final time, standing up. “I love you, Apo. Be safe and be smart.” With that, he strides away from them, around the house to the road that leads from Pity to the train depot. They turn to watch him go, hoping that he’ll change his mind and offer for them to go with him. But he doesn’t, just goes around the corner and vanishes from view.

Apo leans against the wall again, clenching her fist around the stone in her hand. She wonders if this is going to be the rest of her life, watching her loved ones leave and wishing desperately they would take her with them. She understands why they go. She would too, if she could, has dreamt of it more than she can count.

She just doesn’t understand why they won’t take her with them.

The sun has sunk to the very edges of the canyon ridges in the distance when Apo finally moves, slipping back inside on quiet feet and running upstairs to peek into her and her brother’s shared room. She whispers his name into the space, but the air is still and his things are already gone. The house feels colder and emptier, just her and her father enclosed in its walls now.

She sleeps under the bed that night, tears staining the floorboards under her head. Years later, she wishes she’d taken the chance to hug him that final time, to say a proper goodbye even if she couldn’t convince him to take her with him. Years after that, she finds that she can’t remember his name any clearer than she can remember what her mother smelled like.

The house is dead silent today, has been since well before dawn, when Apo jolted awake to the loud whinnies of a horse in the neighbor’s pasture. Sal hasn’t been there for three days, not since he told her he was meeting with a business associate out of town. It means that Apo has a treasured moment of quiet to catch her breath before he comes back.

She hopes it’s not the same business he sometimes conducts with her, loaning her out to certain men who don’t care how old she is or how pretty she is if they can have a girl with them for one night. Apo’s assisted in more scams than she can count, always does whatever her father asks of her like the perfect diligent daughter, but that particular method of his to get cash is one she hates more than the others.

It’s worse when he does it, coming into her room with whiskey stink on his breath and wandering hands. At least then Apo can guess when it’s happening occasionally, prevent it if possible. If she fights back against him, it will only earn her more bruises come morning, and he’ll be particularly awful for days. So Apo’s old flight instinct activates.

Sal Kuna keeps leaving on longer and longer business trips, ever since the mayor started saying there was gold to be found in the mines in Pity, hoping to attract people to his dying town. Apo’s lived here long enough to know that whatever gold was here dried up long ago, but Sal either believes it or hopes the men he’s indebted to will. Every time he leaves, it’s like a weight lifts from Apo; she’s finally free to breathe, not having to worry about the cooking and cleaning, not fearing what the slightest mistake will bring on her.

From inside the house, the kettle squeals, and Apo pushes herself off the brick and board steps to get it. She lays her drawing on the table as she passes it, a sketch of the frontier done on a brown paper bag leftover from groceries. She has several stored upstairs, in an old hatbox her mother left behind. Her father doesn’t know about them and she’s certain he’d burn them if he did. He doesn’t like her wasting time on anything that won’t make them money quick.

Apo feels bad for it, but there’s nothing for her to do when he isn’t there besides hang out with 4C, and that always runs the risk of her father discovering she has a friend. He’s always fast to remind them that it doesn’t matter whether or not people in Pity like them, because they won’t stick around long enough for it to be worth anything. He’s been saying it for years, but Apo still loathes forming permanent attachments with people.

After all, they might leave her like her mother and brother did. She can’t trust anyone. It’s not worth it.

They take the kettle off of the stove and pour the boiling water into a cup filled with mint. 4C has a mint patch that he gives her sprigs from sometimes, and she uses them for tea when she starts thinking too much.

Their father says that they never think up anything clever anyway. Apo’s inclined to agree with him, but that doesn’t stop the thoughts from swirling around in their head. It’s mostly just his own words repeated back at them: good for nothing, lazy, dead weight, worthless, clumsy bitch.

Their father loves them, they know. Mama told them once, years and years ago, that he does, and Apo still trusts their mother, even if she left them behind. Their father has to love them, because he stayed. He was the only one who didn’t leave them. He has to love them.

Apo thinks of a dark room, of a groping touch, of the crawling revulsion they feel every time it happens. She pushes those thoughts out of her head.

Apo used to imagine herself riding with her mother and brother out into the desert, the landscape stretching past them as they head towards freedom. Now she knows that that will never happen; she was left behind. Her mother and brother might be together somewhere, although it’s more likely that they’re not, and Apo was left behind with a man who loves money and drink more than his family.

Apo knows their father loves them. They just don’t think his love outweighs his greed. Sal Kuna is a man consumed by paranoia and want, the constant yearning for something more than his lot in life. But he’s the only one who’s stayed, and Mama said he loves her, so Apo can weather the temper and the visits in the dead of night and the men he sells her to.

He stayed for her, so she can stay for him.

The front door slams open as she’s finishing her tea, and Apo jumps up to put the cup in the sink before he notices. Sal Kuna staggers into the kitchen, not looking too worse for wear. He’s off balance, but he doesn’t smell too hard of any alcohol, and he doesn’t look too angry either. The meeting with his business associate must have gone well.

Apo prays it’s not what she thinks it is, although she knows better than to complain if it is.

“Whaddya doin’, girl?” he asks when he sees her, wedged into a corner of the kitchen to stay out of his way.

“Nothing,” she says softly. “Just finishing up the dishes before you got home.” The paper bag is still on the table, she realizes, with her drawing clearly visible. She catches her breath; he’s screamed about “sissy shit” happening under his roof instead of productivity before. More times than she can count.

“Pack up,” he tells her. A flash of fear shoots through her, cold and dark. “We’re goin’ to Santa Fe; this new associate o’ mine’s told me all sortsa rumors ‘bout some ‘lixer of life. We’re gonna pretend to sell it, alright, girl?”

Apo holds her breath and debates whether or not he’s in a good enough mood that she could get away with asking her question. “And what’s my role?” she asks.

“Satisfied customer,” he says, waving his hand. “Put the labels on the bottles or sump’n. I’ll figure it out. You always gotta job to do.”

“I know, Da.” Relief spreads through her, cool and soothing. She won’t be used today. She could practically collapse.

Sal nods, satisfied, and his gaze falls on the paper bag. Apo freezes, relief curdling in her as she feels that familiar fear. “Wha’s this?” he asks, low and dangerous, hand pulling it closer. Apo says nothing. If she makes herself small enough, maybe she can disappear. If she runs fast enough, maybe she can make it under the bed or outside before he reaches her.

Sal turns to face her, like a rattlesnake on the prairie. “Apo,” he starts, storm brewing in his tone, “wha’s this?”

“I—” Apo tries, stuttering over herself as she tries to figure out a way to word it that won’t result in her getting hit. “I—”

“Use your words, girl,” he growls.

“I—uh—it’s nothing, I just—it’s just while I was bored, it’s—”

“Apo, whad’ve I told you ‘bout drawin’?” His face is angry. Apo feels a flush of guilt and dread.

“I’m sorry,” she says, pleading for the monster not to eat her, “it won’t happen again, I promise—”

“Sure as hell it won’t,” he snarls, standing up and gripping her upper arm tight. She lets out a pained cry, sure that he’s bruising her, as he drags her from the kitchen to the main room. She knows what he’s going to do before he does it, the same thing he did to her coloring book years and years ago, but she’s powerless to stop it.

He throws her down and she lands hard, palms smarting from the fall. “No,” she chokes out, “Da, I’m sorry—”

“This is a lesson, girl,” he tells her, tossing her sketch into the blackened fireplace and lighting a match. He drops it onto the brown paper, watching as it catches and begins to burn, edges curling. “This is how the real world’ll treat you. You’ll thank me later.”

Apo’s eyes stay fixed on the flames. She didn’t have any attachment to that drawing in particular, no more than all of the others, but she knows what he would do if he found the rest hidden in her room upstairs, and that’s what makes it so awful. Sal Kuna feels no remorse in destroying her property to teach her a lesson, just like he feels no remorse in reinforcing that lesson through punches.

She wishes she’d never been born his daughter, and then immediately feels awful. He’s stayed with her. He’s stayed, and Mama said he loves her. She should be more grateful to him for keeping her fed and clothed, for teaching her the cruelty of the world. Her father loves her, and she should love him back.

All Apo feels is the same hollow feeling she did watching her mother and her brother leaving; the feeling of loss and regret.

Summertime is when the cicadas reach their noisiest, buzzing day and night like they’re trying to let the entire world know where they are. It also happens to be the time Apo most enjoys spending outside, visiting the horses at 4C’s ranch and saying hello to False whenever they cross paths. She turns twenty-two in an empty house, the same way she’s spent her birthday for the past twelve years; 4C is kind enough to remember and get her a little bag of penny candy from the general store that she thanks him for over and over.

Sal Kuna’s obsessive hunt for riches leads him deeper and deeper into the mines of Pity, giving Apo more and more time she doesn’t have to look over her shoulder or hide. Somewhere along the way, his frantic lies to the men he was indebted to turned into some kind of fanatical faith that there really was gold, if only for him. He comes stumbling home less and less, days stretching into weeks before they hear the slam of the front door again. No new scams to assist in, no new associates to be sold to, no more late night visits to their room, no more sour stench of alcohol and fear in the house.

Apo keeps expecting to hear him stagger through the door, swearing up a storm about his rotten luck in the mines or gambling or whatever else had kept him out. When he doesn’t find anything underground, he goes to the saloon to drown his anger in whiskey and cards, making the debts and his paranoia worse.

The house stays strangely silent for nearly a month. Apo’s muscles are tensed from waiting for it to break, for the stillness to shatter.

4C smacks his gum when they come to visit, leaning against the fence post of his paddock cool as anything. It’s not tobacco that he’s chewing; not like their father does sometimes, spitting black streams onto the ground that make them sick. It’s just the sap-based gum that most teens get, coming in from the east on the trains.

“How can you stand that stuff?” they ask, wrinkling their nose as they hop up on the worn planks. “It tastes like crap.”

4C shrugs. “Better than what your father gets,” he says, not unkindly. “It gives me something to do while taking care of them.” He jerks his head toward the horses roaming their enclosed little area, patchy grass poking through the sand.

They nudge him with their foot. “But the taste.”

“You get used to it, I guess. It’s like smelling something bad, and eventually it becomes normal and you stop registering it.” He knocks his knuckles against the fence. “You wanna help me feed ‘em?”

Apo smiles, jumping off of her perch. “Always.”

He laughs, shaking his head. “How do you enjoy doing my chores so much?”

“The trick is to not think of them as chores,” she tells him, following him to the stables. “It’s not a chore if horses are involved.”

4C scoffs. “Clearly you’ve never shoveled their poop before.”

“That’s why I come over here for horses and I don’t actually own any,” Apo says brightly. He snorts on a laugh, smacking his gum again.

“So you’re using me for my horses.”

Apo nods sagely. “Yep.”

On her way back home, Apo walks past scrubgrass and juniper. A black-tailed jackrabbit races across her path, startled by her footsteps. The sun turns the air into a slow cooker, turning the landscape into a shimmer that plays tricks on the eyes. When she reaches her house, she sits on the brick and board steps, resting her arms on her knees.

Sal has never been gone this long before; nearly two months since he last returned to the house. He doesn’t have anywhere else to stay in town, and no human can survive underground for that long. She considers the options. He could’ve hopped a train to somewhere like the rest of her family did, only this time he didn’t tell her. Or a poker game fight could’ve ended with him beat up and dumped out in the sand for the coyotes and birds to feast. Or maybe he’d simply gotten lost in the mines and wasted away.

“I guess he’s really gone,” she murmurs.

Apo chews her lip, struggling to put a name to what she feels. It isn’t grief, not like when her mother and brother left; she can’t quite mourn for him. The abandonment hurts, though. He was the only one who hadn’t left her, and now he’s gone as well. Apo has no one.

It’s a vast feeling, one that echoes around them. Apo casts their gaze around the dusty lane in front of them, the worn clapboard houses, the tired look to everything. Sal was the one to drag them all out here, nearly a decade ago. With him gone, there’s no reason for them to stay around.

They think of 4C and the horses, False’s friendly chatter whenever they run into her, the sweep of the frontier. They used to have dreams of running away with their mother and brother, grabbing a horse and riding way out into the sun. It was more a method of escape than anything, but now Apo could actually do it.

Freedom is a strange feeling. They didn’t expect it to feel so much like restlessness.

They realize that they don’t have to hide under the bed now, that they can slam the door if they want to and jump down the stairs, that they don’t have to hide their drawings under their bed. They don’t have to be afraid of him anymore.

Well. Maybe not him specifically, but it’s a foolish thing to think that the world’s cruelty will stop just because one man is gone. Apo still has to be careful. Anyone else could be a threat; it’s a lesson she learned early in life. One she knows is true.

But Apo is free now. She isn’t tied to this town or her father. She can go wherever she wants.

Two days later, the sandstorm hits.

Apo feels a scream building in her throat and resists the urge to kick something. Of course. Of course she can’t be free. She should’ve expected this. Sal Kuna always has to have the last word; she should’ve known he wouldn’t let her get away that easily.

Even when he’s dead, she will always be his daughter, trapped in the cage he constructed for her. Why did she expect that the door would be unlocked just because he wasn’t there to taunt her with the key anymore? She still has his last name, still has his debts and choices looming over her life like an everpresent shadow. He slipped the noose with his death and left it cinched tight around her neck.

“I deserve a life!” Apo screams to the trees. She spent her childhood hiding from him in fear, watching her mother leave and her brother follow, stuck with her father in that poisonous house. She couldn’t leave, wasn’t allowed to have friends or anything outside of helping with his scams. She was his to use as he saw fit. She thought she’d finally be free of it. She was going to leave, finally get out of the backwater he dragged them to and do what she wanted for once.

She was going to be free, and now she’s not.

Apo wouldn’t even mind if the barrier surrounded Pity, trapping her like a bug in amber, if she was left alone. Hell, she wouldn’t mind Cherri and her stupid crossbow if they weren’t stuck in Pity together, with nothing to do and nowhere to go. She could take one or the other, she thinks, but not both together. It suffocates her, worming its way under her skin to settle in her bones with a persistent itch.

Apo wants, has always wanted, to leave. And instead, she’s always the one that gets left behind.

At least with the barrier around the town, no one else can skip out on her.

Cherri is gone, for once, off doing god knows what and leaving Apo to their own devices until she gets back. They escaped the town and all of the new people there in favor of the trees down by the riverbank, needing to be alone with their thoughts for a little bit. There’s a complex tangle of emotions in Apo’s chest that they can’t even begin to unknot, and being around Cherri with the constant looming threat of her crossbow makes it so much worse.

Still, Apo wants her to like them. Every time the hint of a smile tugs at Cherri’s lips, or she shows a small crack in her tough facade, a little bit of kindness shining through, Apo feels their pulse quicken. They want her to turn that approval on them, no matter how small it is.

Apo needs permission to take up space, not like Cherri, who fills a room with her presence without even trying. It’s intoxicating to watch her, confident and self-assured. Apo wonders what it would be like to feel that way.

The first words she spoke to them: “If you don’t want an arrow lodged in your throat, don’t move a muscle.” The tone of a woman used to issuing threats, unafraid to follow through with them. Apo’s breath had caught. Their fight or flight instinct always triggers flight; their only strength is their speed and their knack for finding places to curl up until the danger passes. But Cherri meets danger head on, evidenced by the way she handles her crossbow and the scar cutting across her face.

Apo wants it, the fearlessness and strength. Maybe then they wouldn’t have gotten trapped in this town. Maybe then they could’ve left ages ago.

No, they couldn’t have. Their father was still there, after all, and he hadn’t left them. Their father loved them. They couldn’t abandon him.

As it turned out, he abandoned them first. Apo supposes gold is worth more than a daughter with no particular talent for anything save getting herself hurt. A daughter that isn’t really a daughter at all; just a tool and not a very useful one.

Apo sighs and shakes away those thoughts for now, turning to head back into town. She can dwell on that later; for now, she needs to find Cherri before the woman gets annoyed at her absence. The unfairness of it all prickles across her skin. She shoves that down too. The world isn’t fair. Her father taught her that much, at least. And it seems he’s still teaching her even after his death.

She can’t escape him, apparently. She will always be her father’s daughter.

It’s a bitter thought.

Once Apo gets past the crossbow and the threats, Cherri is…actually really easy to be around. Apo finds herself liking them. A lot. They’re aggressive, and quick to draw, and standoffish; they boss Apo around and close up if she asks them a question they don’t want to answer; they enjoy teasing her and holding her father’s debts over her head whenever Apo starts to fight against them.

But they also agreed to plant the orchard when Apo suggested it, helping her pick the fruits and making pies with her, grumbling about it but shoving up their sleeves to roll out the dough. They got into flour fights with her in the kitchen, and giggling together with white dusting every surface, Apo could almost forget that they were a bounty hunter and she was technically their hostage.

Watching them care for the orchard, coo over the strange little gnarpy creatures, or shower Blossom with praise and affection does something funny to Apo’s chest. They look so soft, so comfortable and happy, face crinkled up in an adoring smile. It’s different from their usual dry amusement or hard stare, rare and treasured.

Apo finds all the sides of Cherri interesting, of course, not just her joy. She’s just as pretty when she’s laughing as she is when she’s angry, incandescent in her rage, or when she’s threatening someone. Just as pretty as the first time Apo met her, when she turned around to find Cherri glaring at her with a crossbow leveled at her throat.

It’s a phenomenally stupid thing to be doing, but Apo has never once claimed to be smart. Their father made sure to tell them as much: untalented, ignorant, dumb, slow, idiot. All those words that came out when they did something he disliked or messed up in any way.

That’s another thing that they’ve noticed. Cherri, for all that they’re her hostage, for all that she teases them, has never once put them down. Her words are always lighthearted or else said in a way that Apo knows she doesn’t really mean it. She sighs at them when she’s exasperated, but she does it in a fond way that makes Apo’s heart beat faster. Apo knows that she’s not nice; she has no problem attacking the bandits when they start to get too cocky, nor does she ever hesitate to remind Apo who holds the power in their situation.

But she doesn’t berate them for every little thing, and it makes Apo think that they might be getting close to being friends.

(She ignores the little voice in her head or the butterflies in her stomach that say she wants them to be more. They’re wrong, anyhow.

And if 4C gives her a knowing smirk when her face flushes after Cherri compliments her, that’s none of his business either. He can chew his disgusting gum and stay out of it.)

It’s just another day, the sun burning in the sky like it’s trying to condemn everyone on earth for their sins, but cool under the trees of their orchard. Apo reaches for another apple to add to the basket at her feet, stretching onto her tiptoes and just barely grazing her fingertips against the fruit. She frowns, jumping for it and missing but managing to hit it. The contact jostles it, sending it to the ground, and Apo looks up to share her victory with Cherri, only to find the woman running her hands along one of the trunks.

She looks calm, almost content, a small smile on her face. Apo loses her breath. She’s beautiful like this, sunlight filtering through the leafy canopy to dapple her in gold. Caring for the orchard softens the harsh edges of her, and the strange half-shadowy light leaves her silhouette blurred and smudged, like a watercolor painting. It isn’t that Apo doesn’t find Cherri gorgeous even when her anger and sharpness is showing, but she likes seeing her happy more, just because it means that she’s enjoying herself.

Apo looks at her and realizes.

Oh. Oh, fuck.

Cherri notices Apo staring and looks up, raising an eyebrow. “What is it?” she asks. The eye that doesn’t have a scar tracing through it flashes in the light. Apo pushes down whatever thoughts she has about Cherri being beautiful.

“Nothing,” she manages, turning back to her basket of apples. “I’m gonna take these inside.”

“Alright,” Cherri says slowly, confused. She shakes her head fondly. “Weirdo.”

In the kitchen, Apo buries her head in her hands and screams silently. “I’m such an idiot,” she mutters to no one. “I’m such an idiot, oh my god.”

Cherri isn’t going to stick around once the barrier falls. Apo isn’t foolish or naive enough to think that she will. She’s been vocal from the moment she arrived how much she hated this place, and learning that she was trapped didn’t make it better. Apo knows that the second she gets the chance, she’s going to be riding off into the sunset, either with Sal Kuna’s bones or Apo’s own. Apo will be alone. Again.

Not that she should be surprised about that, she reminds herself. Cherri has no obligation to stay. They’ve never said that they would, not like her mother or brother or even Sal. It’s always been about the bounty—get in, get it done, get out, get paid. The barrier around Pity was just a setback, and taking Apo as a hostage was a means to an end. Their arrangement was always temporary. Cherri’s presence by her side wasn’t a guaranteed thing once the barrier fell, and it never has been.

So why does it hurt so much to think of her leaving?

Apo knows that people leave. She would consider herself something of an expert on it. It’s a natural fact of the world, like the sun rising. She’s known from the very beginning that Cherri will leave once she gets what she needs, once she’s able, and there was a time when Apo looked forward to that day, to saying goodbye and watching her figure retreat into the distance.

Now, when she thinks of it, it just feels hollow. She wants Cherri to stay; maybe not in Pity, because Apo wants nothing to do with the town either, but with her. She wants Cherri, always and all the time. After a lifetime of not wanting things, not wanting people, Apo feels greedy for Cherri, for her presence and her laugh and the way she says Apo’s name.

This is why connections are dangerous. Because people leave. Because no one is a guarantee. Because Apo has had to say goodbye to everyone she’s ever cared about, everyone that was supposed to care about her. Because loving hurts. It’s a lesson she learned early on, and she is so sick of getting hurt.

Really, genuinely, Apo didn’t expect to ever find her father’s body. She thought she’d made peace with it, but she never thought she’d see him dead. She thought he was gone and she could scrub him from her mind, say farewell once and for all.

She keeps staring at the corner where his bones were, even after Cherri puts them away. She can’t get it out of her mind: him lying at the bottom of this hole, broken and bleeding. Waiting for her to come rescue him.

Apo never felt sorry for him, exactly. She struggled to mourn him the way she mourned her mother and her brother. Sal Kuna wasn’t a good man, and the loss she felt with his absence was more a loneliness than any actual grief. But knowing that he expected her to come find him…that he died thinking she would save him…

Apo can’t shake the feeling that it’s her fault he died.

“You couldn’t have made it down here,” Cherri says. “You were in no state to come this deep when I found you.” They mean it to be reassuring, Apo thinks, but it just feels like another way she failed as a daughter. She couldn’t even rescue her missing father. Pathetic.

“I should have tried,” she murmurs, staring at the empty stone. Her father died down here, thinking he would be saved. And maybe he deserved it, maybe it was a fitting end to him, expecting his daughter to be dutiful as ever and paying for it with his life, but it still makes Apo feel sick.

As bad as he was, he stayed. She thought once he’d disappeared that the score was settled, but apparently he didn’t want to leave her. The only fault for his absence lies on her shoulders.

“Do you want to talk about it?” Cherri asks, trying to be kind. It’s sweet, and Apo nearly smiles, lips twitching up. They’re trying to be gentle with her, but feelings aren’t something they’re good at. Not that Apo minds. Cherri’s trying for her, and it’s enough to make her warm inside.

“Do I want to talk about my dead dad?” she says, trying to make a joke and falling flat. Cherri makes an amused sound anyway, which Apo appreciates. She sighs. “I mean, no, not really. But also kinda yeah.”

“You can talk about it,” Cherri says. “I can listen.”

Apo frowns, sitting on the cold stone floor of the hole and resting her arms on her knees. Her emotions are all tangled up again, sending a strange pulse through her. Not quite fear, but close. Apo wonders if this will be the rest of her life, scared of a man long dead. “I don’t know. He wasn’t great.” She glances over at the corner again. Cherri shifts to block her view. “He kind of deserved it, honestly.”

But it was still my fault. But he was still my father. Even though he hurt me, he still stayed. Everyone else left and he stayed. I don’t think he ever really loved me, but my mother told me he did once, and I wanted it to be true so I believed her. I thought staying was a sign of love, because my mother and my brother both acted like they loved me but they both left me behind. So yes, maybe he didn’t act like he loved me, but he stayed, and that was more than they did. And I think I love you, but you’re going to leave just like everyone else once this is over, so there’s no point to it. Not like you’d ever love me back, anyway.

Apo can’t say any of that, so they dig the heels of their hands into their eyes and hope it will keep the tears at bay. They aren’t crying for Sal, or maybe they are. The world just feels so big all of a sudden, pressing heavily on their shoulders, and Apo is about to be crushed by the weight of it.

“I don’t want the gold,” they mutter finally.

Cherri frowns, confused. “Why not?”

“Because then I’m like him.”

They sit in silence for a moment before Cherri hums decisively. “Okay. Give me the pickax, and I’ll get it.”

Apo tosses it over without another word and waits while Cherri mines the gold, feeling around in their pockets. They laugh when they feel a smooth surface under their thumb, the indents of dots in the side. “I still have my die.”

Cherri glances over at them with a smile, the scar through her eye clefting her top lip and revealing a peak of her canine. Apo really wants to kiss her in that moment, represses the urge. “You know 99 percent of gamblers quit before they make it big?”

Apo groans. “You can’t say that in front of me,” they lament, already pulling the die out of their pocket. They roll, intently focused as the dice come up. Two, two, three, three, four. They scoop the die up with a practiced movement and start to roll them again.

“At least we still have Yahtzee while we’re stuck down here,” Cherri says, sitting beside them and taking out her own die. She rolls them and gets a six, six, four, five, one.

Apo lets out a short laugh. “At least. We can be entertained before we die.”

“We’re not going to die down here,” Cherri groans. “Look, we’ve got his body now, and once the walls go down like everyone keeps saying they will, we can turn it in to my employer.”

Apo feels a cold flash of dread at the reminder that this isn’t permanent. She and Cherri will go their separate ways soon. Inevitable as it is, she was enjoying not thinking about it. She thought if she ignored it, it would make it less real. But Cherri is still leaving soon, and Apo will still be alone.

It’s for the best, she tells herself. Cherri will be gone, and Apo will go back to the no attachments rule that she’s lived by. She’ll be free to see the world, perhaps even find her mother and brother. She won’t have to worry about Sal Kuna or his debts any longer. Time will get rid of her stupid feelings for the woman next to her.

And as for Cherri? She’ll forget she ever knew Apo, which is definitely for the better. Her time in Pity will fade to a distant memory eventually. She’ll go back to bounty hunting, and Apo will get on the next train out, and they’ll go their separate ways, and it’ll be fine. It’ll be for the better.

Apo really doesn’t want that to happen. “Does that mean you’re planning on going too?” she asks, fighting to keep her voice steady and neutral. “Once the walls are down?”

Cherri gives her a blank look. “I mean, I’m definitely not staying here. I couldn’t do that. I’d die of boredom.”

“All of the murderous rage inside you would have no place to go,” Apo jokes, trying to cover up the creeping disappointment she feels. She reminds herself that she knew this was coming. It’s not like she’s staying in Pity either. She always knew she’d say goodbye to Cherri eventually.

“I just can’t do it,” they complain, rolling their dice again. “This town is crazy.”

Apo looks at them, illuminated faintly in the torchlight. It shines off of their hair, flickers along their face. They’re beautiful, per usual. Apo’s heart skips several beats.

A sudden surge of anger towards her father rushes over her, not for what he did to her but for his stupid rules and parameters. She wasn’t allowed to have friends as a child because of his delusions that eventually he’d strike it rich and they’d all move away. Even once he realized it wouldn’t be that simple, he still kept her from making connections with people, forced her to always be ready to go whenever he needed her. Fuck that. She has a friend, sitting right beside her, making this hole infinitely more bearable right now.

If he had someone with him, maybe he wouldn’t have died.

She wants to meet people. She doesn’t want to be lonely anymore. Even if it hurts, even if they leave her. She wants to have friends.

“Yeah, you’re right,” she says decisively. Cherri raises an eyebrow, confused. “You’re right. He’s dead, he’s not coming back, it happens.”

“He’s dead,” they agree, holding up the burlap sack that carries Sal Kuna’s final remains. “I’ve got his bones right here, and once we’re free, we can go back to the person who paid me to get them and he’ll give us a load of money for them.”

“You—” Apo starts, and then cuts herself off as something occurs to her. She looks at Cherri with wide eyes, struggling to comprehend what she heard. It was a trick, surely. She heard it wrong. She had to have heard it wrong. There’s no way. “We?”

Cherri flushes pink and turns away. “I’ma go back to rolling dice,” she mutters, picking up her die again.

A sunny glow blossoms in Apo’s chest. There’s a smile tugging at the corners of her mouth. “You said we.”

“I’m gonna go back to rolling dice,” Cherri repeats.

“We’re staying together?”

“I’m rolling dice.”

“We’re staying together,” Apo says, feeling the truth of it settle in her chest. They won’t be splitting up when the barrier falls, never to see each other again. Cherri wants her around, asked her to stay. Cherri wants her.

Cherri wants Apo to come with her, to travel with her and see the world with her. Cherri wants her there for whatever comes next. Cherri wants them staying together.

Apo’s heart is going supernova in her chest. She’s an idiot. People leave, of course they do, that’s the natural order of things; but people stay, too. There are things worth loving, things worth getting hurt for. The girl beside her. The prospect of seeing the world with her someday. An entire future, endless possibility.

Apo is giddy at the thought.

“You want me to go with you?” she double checks.

“Wouldn’t have said it if I didn’t mean it,” Cherri grumbles, but she’s smiling, that same smile that makes Apo’s stomach do somersaults.

“Yeah, okay,” she says easily, like it doesn’t mean everything. “I’ll stick with you.”

The tips of Cherri’s ears turn pink, and she mutters, “Cool.”

“Cool,” Apo echoes, impossibly buoyant. Her heart is pounding, a star’s formation, the birth of a galaxy. For the first time in her life, Apo feels wanted.