Chapter Text
The Ruby’s engines thrum against his back as he sits in a reversed passenger’s seat, doing his best not to stare as Juno sleeps. He thinks he could be forgiven, he wasn’t even sure he’d see Juno again, and now that he has him back Nureyev wants to do little more than watch the steady rise and fall of his chest. But he doesn’t want to make Juno uncomfortable, so when he remembers himself, he looks away.
He wishes he could say Juno looked good. Truthfully, Juno looks exhausted; his collarbones are prominent, his cheeks hollowed, his skin pale and grief obvious in the lines of his face. Over a month since Nureyev left the Carte Blanche behind, and—he hadn’t known. He hadn’t known Juno was searching, alone. He hadn’t known how fully he'd left Juno behind.
At least, of course, Juno found him. After that, Juno made his fury very clear.
So Nureyev drinks in his fill and hesitates to touch. He knows where he stands but doesn’t know where Juno stands, and everything is fragile, and he doesn’t want to push too hard and lose this again.
“Stop that,” Juno grunts.
Nureyev blinks at him, startled. “I hadn’t realized you were awake.”
“All your hovering woke me up,” Juno grumbles. “’s making my head hurt worse than it already is.”
“Oh, my apologies,” Nureyev says quickly, “let me just—”
“Damn it,” Juno groans, and reaches for him. “That’s—that isn’t what I meant.”
Nureyev—who has the back of his head already pressed to the Ruby’s window, to allow Juno as much room to lie down as he could without physically vacating the backseat—blinks at him helplessly. “Juno....”
“Kidding,” Juno manages, and winces, closing his eye suddenly. When it opens he takes a deep breath and starts struggling to prop himself up on his elbows. “Bad joke. Sorry. Just mean I’m fine, not that I don’t...you know.”
“It’s all right, I understand,” Nureyev says, and leans forward again, pressing Juno gently back down into the car’s fake-leather. Quiet enough that Juno can’t hear, the Ruby beeps something like approval. Nureyev swallows. “How are you feeling?”
“Fine. I mean, head hurts—well, everything hurts, really—but other than that.”
He grins, exhausted. Nureyev’s heart aches. “Is there anything I can do?”
“Just c’mere,” Juno grumbles, waving Nureyev closer. When Nureyev hesitates, he sighs. “Look,” Juno says, quieter this time. “We...still have to talk, and I’m...angry with you. But I do want you here.”
Nureyev hesitates. He is thinking about how angry Juno was yesterday, and how some of that rage is still bleeding over. About how, when Nureyev had left the Carte Blanche he’d gone with the chilled certainty that he would never be able to call Juno his partner again.
He still isn’t sure he deserves forgiveness. Not for leaving, and not for being too much of a coward to tell his family anything. Maybe, if he’d said something, they could’ve helped him.
Maybe he could’ve helped them.
“Oh, Nureyev,” Juno murmurs, and by the time Nureyev realizes that his vision is blurring he’s already sat up, hands gently pulling Nureyev to his shoulder. To his very, very injured shoulder.
“Juno, wait—your injury—”
“Isn’t exactly gonna get worse,” Juno interrupts him, voice gentle for all of that. “I wasn’t kidding when I said I was still angry, and I still have questions, but I love you, Nureyev. That...hasn’t changed.” He laughs at himself under his breath. “Not sure what could, at this point.”
“That’s silly, Juno,” he informs Juno severely, as well as he can through his own tears. He never thought he’d feel Juno’s arms around him again. He is still so, so warm. “An unconditional love is just—that’s just infatuation, and I don’t....”
Juno laughs. Nureyev does his best to be offended, but instead he finds himself burying his face in Juno’s shoulder. “I know, Nureyev,” Juno whispers. “I know. I’m sure there’s a limit somewhere. Haven’t found it yet, though, and I want you...I want you to know that.”
“Okay,” Nureyev manages, voice hoarse. “I’m sorry.”
Juno kisses the side of his temple. “I know.”
For a long time, Juno simply holds him. Nureyev, feeling relieved and guilty and grateful all at once, presses himself closer to Juno’s warmth and cries. He’s not sure what to do with it, if he’s honest. He hasn’t cried in...well, since the tomb, he supposes. But now that he has Juno back and Juno still loves him , despite it all, well—it all comes out at once. In great, gasping, unattractive sobs that he hadn’t even realized he was capable of making.
And through it all, Juno holds him, running careful fingers up and down Nureyev’s back, murmuring soothingly into Nureyev’s ear.
After a while Nureyev empties. He shouldn’t take this, he knows. Shouldn’t take advantage of Juno’s pity, but he’s so comfortable, here in Juno’s arms. He feels, for the first time in a very, very long time, safe.
Juno. He remembers himself sounding out the name. He remembers Glass’s lilting amusement, because what is protection if not nothing more than a symbol? Goddess of protectors.
Juno had laughed. He'd been bitter. Now, Nureyev knows that he was thinking of his brother, and his mother.
But here, in Juno’s arms, graced with his forgiveness and his love and the thought of continuing: of a life beyond this, with him—here, Juno is solid and warm, every wounded inch of him a protector.
“I love you,” Nureyev says, choking on the words. “Juno, I hope you know that. I wanted nothing more than to stay.”
“I know. I mean,” he says, still tracing aimless shapes along Nureyev’s back through the thin fabric of his shirt, “you weren’t exactly subtle about it.”
“Affection can be faked,” Nureyev says without thinking about it, part of him furious for trying to make Juno doubt and the other desperate with the desire to make sure Juno knows, doubts and all. “You’ve seen me do it a hundred times, Juno.”
“Sure,” Juno says, and shrugs. “But...not like you were with me.” He leans forward and kisses the crown of Nureyev’s head. “I trust you, Nureyev. Still mad, still curious and pissed, but still very much in love, and...I think part of being in love is trusting the person you’re with.”
Nureyev bows his head again against Juno’s chest, more relieved than he can say. His breathing hitches and he swallows back another humiliating sob. Because he says it so easily, like Nureyev hadn’t abandoned him. Like Nureyev hadn’t abandoned their whole family to Dark Matters. He’d left, and then they were all taken and Juno was shot, without him.
Juno shifts, and to Nureyev's horror, he realizes that the shoulder he was crying on was the one a blaster just burned through. Nureyev leaps back as though burned, and his fingers tremble as he reaches out then snatches his hand back.
“Love, your shoulder!”
Juno shrugs again, and now Nureyev can see the wince that accompanies the movement. “Eh. It’s been worse.”
“Juno.”
“It’s fine,” Juno says soothingly. “Honestly.”
“You were shot there not an hour ago, detective,” Nureyev snaps, “I highly doubt that it is simply fine . Why didn’t you stop me?”
“Not for all the gold in the universe,” Juno says earnestly. “I mean, not unless it’d pay off your debts, but even still I’d have to think about it.”
“Juno, please.”
The humor drops from his countenance. “Because I heal fast, now,” Juno says. He closes his eye and takes a breath, then says, “Help me take my shirt off.”
“Juno, I hardly think this is the time.”
Juno barks out a laugh. “Not for that, Nureyev, I don’t think the Ruby would be happy with us. No, just...trust me. You’ll see.”
Hesitating, concerned, Nureyev helps Juno struggle out of his shirt. He steels himself for the sight of Juno, laid bare once more, and focuses instead on the smoothed creases of Juno’s shirt. After a long moment, he looks.
Nureyev’s eyes go wide, and he covers his mouth. “Juno,” he breathes. “What happened?”
“I got shot,” Juno says, a small smile quirking up his lips. “What, never seen someone heal miraculously from a blaster wound before?”
Nureyev reaches out to touch the mottled skin, his touch featherlight. It’s not healed properly, bruised, black-and-purple, some of it rotting and flaking. There’s a dent in his chest where it landed, and he...he shouldn’t have survived this. Nureyev’s heart in his throat.
All he can manage is, “Juno....”
“What?” Juno looks down at his unblemished shoulder, where he’d been shot. Then he looks at the other, the one Nureyev’s staring at, and says, “Oh god damn it. I forgot about that.”
“What do you mean you forgot about this?”
“That happened six weeks ago,” Juno says, and Nureyev doesn’t have to do the math to realize he’s referring to the same time Nureyev left. “Uh, Sasha, actually. Sorry, I...kinda forget it’s there most of the time. Except when it hurts, which is...a lot of the time actually?” Juno shakes his head. “Anyway, other one’s fine now.”
Sasha. Sasha Wire, Juno’s childhood friend. Sasha Wire, Director W., in league with Dark Matters, who kidnapped his family and attempted to fatally shoot the love of his life.
Nureyev doesn’t realize his fists are clenched until Juno uncurls them, finger-by-finger, painfully reverent. “I’m okay,” Juno murmurs, and takes one of his hands and guides it over his chest. The skin over his heart is dry and cracked, but beneath it he can feel Juno’s heart beating. Nonsensically, painfully, he thinks again of protection, of safety, of trust.
“You shouldn’t have survived,” Nureyev says numbly. “Not a shot like that.”
“No,” Juno agrees. “I was holding the Curemother Prime in front of my heart when she shot me. When it broke, some of it got into my bloodstream. Now it’s in me.”
He says it so casually. Nureyev can’t pull his eyes from the wound, the skin that he remembers as a tapestry, a rich plane of earth creased with rivers of whitened scarring. What sits on Juno’s shoulder now is a crater from an explosion, the sort that would wipe out all life on its planet.
Nureyev feels sick.
“Oh, Nureyev,” Juno murmurs again, and sits up—this time, there is no wincing, there is no indication of pain—and presses his forehead to Nureyev’s. “I’m sorry. I know this is a lot to throw at you.”
“It’s no less than what you’ve been living,” Nureyev points out, pulling himself back to the present. He closes his eyes, and runs his fingers blindly across the wound, then raises his hand to tentatively rest in the crook of Juno’s neck and shoulder. “I am...so, so sorry, Juno.”
“It wasn’t your fault. I know, I know, that’s not why you’re apologizing, but just....” He hears Juno swallow, feels the movement against the side of his hand. “Let’s not talk about it right now, okay? I’m too tired to be really angry right now, and I...guess I just missed you.”
“Of course,” Nureyev murmurs. Even with the anxiety that accompanies the promise of an impending argument, he’s calmer than he has been in weeks. He steadies his nerves, remembers what Juno had said about love, and presses a tentative kiss to the curve of Juno’s jaw.
When he leans back, Juno is smiling, and Nureyev’s horrified to see tears welling up in his eye as well. “Juno, I—”
The Ruby whistles sharply, and Juno laughs. He waves Nureyev off with one hand, wiping at his cheek with another. “I just missed you,” Juno repeats simply.
Outside the windows of the Ruby 7, the stars flicker past. Now that he thinks about it, Nureyev’s fairly sure the ETA the Ruby gave him when he first dropped Juno into the backseat passed some twenty minutes ago, but he’ll hardly complain if she’s taking the scenic route.
Nureyev appreciates the reprieve on several different levels. To be able to talk to Juno, of course, but also to steel himself for the return to Juno’s tiny starhauler. Juno’s old friend from the force, Puck, hasn’t antagonized him outright, but Nureyev isn’t blind; he recognizes protective resentment when he sees it. Alessandra’s more blatant with her dislike, and to be honest Nureyev prefers it that way. Even though they dislike him, that dislike comes on Juno’s behalf, and he cannot hold that against them. He’s glad Juno has such loyal friends.
He waits as Juno pivots in the backseat, leaning down to rest his head in Nureyev’s lap. Absently, on a habit well-ingrained in his fingers, he starts to sweep the hair from Juno’s face. Juno’s eye flutters closed.
In the peace provided Nureyev looks at that wound. Just looks. He’d come so close to losing Juno for good, and he’d had no idea. If this crew hadn’t found him, he might never have learned at all.
“Something’s goin’ on in that brain of yours,” Juno murmurs against his thigh. “What’s up?”
Nureyev discards his horrified hypotheticals and returns instead to an earlier worry. Softly he prompts, “You mentioned that the Curemother Prime is a part of you, now.”
Juno groans and rolls over in his lap. “Mm. Yeah. What’s in my bloodstream’s probably all that’s left, which is gonna be a lot of fun for Vespa once we break everyone out.”
“Does it work?” He can’t help the eagerness in his voice. He first heard about the legend of the Curemother Prime when he was nothing more than a child, and that wishful excitement lives in him still.
“Yep. Be dead without it. There are some limitations though. It can’t cure anything I don’t know is a wound—‘s at least partially cognitive—and I can’t overwhelm it.”
“Overwhelm it?”
“I can’t get shot like that again,” Juno says quietly. “At that point, probably even the Prime couldn’t help me.” He rolls over to face Nureyev. “There’s...not much of it left. And if I want there to be enough left in me when we get everyone out, I’ve gotta be careful of what I ask from it.”
Nureyev...doesn’t particularly like that, but Juno’s reasoning is sound. “Very well,” he accepts, and makes a mental note to be sure Juno isn’t neglecting any serious injuries. It makes him deeply uncomfortable, that Juno has the ability to heal and a very good reason to keep from doing so for the ‘greater good’, but he doesn’t point that out. “Then I suppose I’m grateful.”
“Yeah.” Juno grins up at him. In the distance, outside the windshield, Juno’s starhauler gleams against the darkness of the void of space. “I mean, it helped me get back to you.”
“—starts deciding to skip his appointments like his idiot girlfriend I’m going to wring his scrawny neck too!”
“Vespa, darling, I’m sure he’s on his way,” he hears Buddy laugh through the door. “Ransom’s hardly the type.”
“Can’t believe they’re talking shit,” Juno grumbles, lacing his fingers tighter through Nureyev’s. “I’m not that bad of an influence.”
“You’re a horrible influence, love,” Nureyev says lightly, pressing a kiss to Juno’s temple. “Look at me, considering telling them my name.”
Juno looks at him, not fooled for even a second by Nureyev’s playful tone. As always, the look is searching, filleting, leaving him cut open for inspection. Nureyev steadies a lifetime of anxiety and lets Juno drink in his fill.
After a long moment, Juno smiles, eye crinkling with pride. “I’m really proud of you, R—uh, should I keep calling you—?”
“At least until I tell them, yes,” Nureyev says with a lilting laugh, giddiness rising in him at Juno’s pride. “As I said. Horrible influence.”
“I mean, if that’s what I’m influencing you to be doing, I don’t think you should be saying a goddamn word,” Juno grumbles, continuing their little dance. Then he breaks again and says, “I’m glad you trust them this much.”
"They certainly owe me for breaking them out of Dark Matters," Nureyev says lightly.
“They owe both of us, thanks,” Juno mutters, but his lips are still curved in a small smile as he elbows Nureyev. “All right, Ransom, ready to face the shark?”
“That shark does have a name, love,” Nureyev says, dialing the door open. “Hello, Vespa.”
“Thief,” Vespa grumbles, and waves him in. “I heard that, by the way. Go to hell, Steel.”
“Great, thanks. Really appreciate it.”
Vespa growls at him, and Juno flips her off, and Nureyev’s getting ready to mediate when Vespa growls, “Hold on for just one second and sit down over there.”
“Now you’re the one who’s late!”
“I said shut it, Steel!”
Nureyev, surprised to find that he’s still smiling, leads Juno over to perch on one of the gurneys. Vespa clears her throat and says, “Right, Bud. Well. Uh, everything looks good, you should be good to return to, uh, doing your Captain stuff.”
“Clean bill of health, then.”
“Yeah. Except for that bruising, but until it gets worse you should be fine.”
“I’ll keep an eye on it, darling,” Buddy says, waving at Nureyev and Juno with an idle smirk crawling across her face. At his side, Juno stiffens. “Thank you, my love.”
“Wait,” Juno says, a strange tremor in his voice. “Bruising?”
“Yeah, bruising, that’s what I said,” Vespa growls. “What’s it to you?”
“I’m allowed to be worried about my Captain,” Juno snaps right back. His eye doesn’t leave Buddy’s face. “Buddy, it’s...on your temples.”
“Quite,” she says, turning to face him fully. “Is there a problem?”
“No,” Juno says. Then he says, “Yes, actually. It’s, uh, a symptom of radiation sickness.”
Vespa blinks at him. Then she growls, “What?”
“Yeah. Bruising on the temples. It’s kinda specific to Mars, so I’m not surprised you haven’t heard of it.”
“It’s...not one I’ve encountered before, darling.”
“It can take a while to develop,” Juno says quickly. “Ransom saw it on me when we were, you know, en route. Goes away and comes back. It’s nothing to worry about, it’s not an illness or anything, just a symptom of the radiation. On Mars. It shouldn’t get any worse.”
“How the hell do you know this, Steel? Even I’ve never heard of it!”
“It’s pretty common on Mars,” Juno says. Nureyev can feel his pulse rabbiting in his wrist, and Juno pulls his hand away, setting both firmly on his knees. “We, uh, talked about it a lot on the force. But outside of Mars most people don’t know about it. Because it’s, you know...Martian.” Juno looks at all three of them and adds, unnecessarily, “And you spent a while baking in the Cerberus, just waiting on top of that lighthouse like a goddamn idiot.”
“Hey, don’t you go calling Buddy an idiot!”
“She sat out in full radiation every night for years, that’s pretty goddamn stupid!”
“It’s pretty goddamn romantic is what it is, and if you have a problem with it you can address it to my knife !”
“Vespa, Juno. Please,” Buddy says, massaging her temples instinctively before pulling away with a wince. “Juno, you’re certain?”
“Yep,” Juno says. “Totally sure. Definitely.”
Buddy eyes him suspiciously, but dismisses it. “Then I suppose there’s nothing to worry about.”
“Sure,” Vespa says, her own suspicion audible in her voice. “Whatever. Thanks for your input, Steel, but I’m gonna check up on your boyfriend now if that’s okay with you.”
“Perfectly fine,” Juno says, still sounding a little strangled. He pats Nureyev’s hand hurriedly and stands. “Yep, good luck, Ransom. I’ll, uh—see you later.”
“See you then, love,” Nureyev replies, watching, bemused, as Juno strides from the room. The door cycles closed, and Nureyev looks over just in time to see Vespa and Buddy exchanging shrugs.
“I’ll check on it,” Vespa mutters. “Weird as that was, Steel’s probably right. It’s just a little bruising.”
“Thank you, darling.” Buddy kisses Vespa’s temple. “I trust your word. And, I suppose, Juno’s, even if it was...exceedingly strange.”
“Kid’s an awful liar,” Vespa agrees, “but it’d be real goddamn weird if he started trying to kill you now. Okay, go get back in bed, Bud, that’s doctor’s orders.”
“And if I’m very good, the doctor might even join me soon, I hope? I’ve been a horrible patient in the past, so I’m afraid I’ll need some...proper motivation.”
Vespa flushes scarlet. “Uh, yeah,” she says, voice high-pitched, and clears her throat. “Yeah. Just as soon as I’m done here.”
“Please, don’t rush on my account,” Buddy says liltingly, and blows her a kiss as she goes. As she passes Nureyev she says, grinning, “Have a good appointment, Pete, darling.”
“I’ll try not to take too long,” he says archly, knowing full well that Vespa, as much as she might like to rejoin Buddy, would never shirk her duty as ship’s doctor. “Enjoy, Captain.”
“Oh, I will!” she sing-songs, and the door slides shut behind her as well.
Vespa blinks out of her reverie, then looks at Nureyev and narrows her eyes. “Okay, let’s get this over with,” she growls, waving him over. “Tell me everything that happened to you while you and Juno were pulling your stupid rescue-stunt. And yes, Ransom,” she says, cutting him off, “I do mean everything.”
Thankfully for the structural integrity and un-stabbed status of his abdomen, his appointment with Vespa doesn’t take too long. Most of the injuries he’d sustained during the rescue he’d been able to deal with himself, and what he hadn’t Vespa has ready prescriptions for. She sets out his new schedule and he takes it with a grimace at the long list of lotions and pills. Then he reminds himself purposefully of the lady ready to help him administer said lotions, preferably with long soothing touches and a few kisses if he’s lucky, and then it doesn’t seem so frustrating.
“Is that all, then, doctor?”
“Yeah,” Vespa growls. “Yeah, get outta here, I gotta make a call.”
“Oh?”
“It’s none of your goddamn business,” Vespa snaps, dialing an address into her comms. She holds it out in front of her, waiting, but after a handful of seconds it disconnects. “Must be talking to someone else. I’ll try them later,” she grumbles, and jerks her head toward the door. “Now get outta here, I—oh.”
Her comms lights up, and she picks up. “Took you long enough.”
The tenor of the responding voice is unmistakable. Nureyev spent long enough ignoring passive-aggressive comments, and then later a handful of rare, precious, tacit expressions of approval, to forget Puck Falco’s voice. She looks at him and jerks her head toward the door again, eyes narrowed, so he nods and goes.
“There you are,” he says fondly, his footsteps sounding as he walks into their tiny observatory. “I’ve been looking everywhere for you, love.”
“Is everyone okay? What happened?”
“Nothing happened,” Nureyev says soothingly, palms outstretched as he sits. “It’s just that dinner started five minutes ago. Well, it was supposed to, but someone decided not to show.”
He elbows Juno affectionately, and wins a weak smile in response. Concern wells up in him. “Juno? Is everything...all right, love?”
“Everything’s fine,” Juno dismisses, but Nureyev has loved this man long enough to recognize an automatic response when he hears one. After a moment of patient silence, Juno grimaces and shrugs. “Just thinking about Sasha.”
Nureyev blinks. Of everything he’d expected, Sasha hadn’t made the list. “Sasha Wire.”
“Yes, Sasha Wire, what other Sashas do we know?” Juno snaps. Then he drags a hand down his face. “Sorry. I’m just....” He takes a deep breath. “Having her around is...it’s not great.”
“You’re not talking to her,” Nureyev says, a question phrased as a statement, and is relieved when Juno immediately denies it.
“No! I mean, sure, a couple times, but no more than the rest of you, and that’s not—it’s not even what she says, it’s just that she’s here, you know? Because she’s still my family, despite everything. And I know that’s stupid and I know it makes no sense, but having her down there, in the brig....” Juno trails off, an unhappy set to his lips. “I just hate it, I guess.”
“That’s not stupid, love,” Nureyev points out gently. That is his love, through and through: continuing to care, even after it’s burned him many, many times. There is a part of Nureyev that wishes he would not forgive so easily; but he’s a selfish creature, and he’s sinned more times than he can count, so the rest of him is devoutly grateful that Juno is so forgiving. “She was dear to you once, and you wish she could be what she was.”
“Yeah,” Juno acknowledges softly. “Yeah, Ransom. That’s...exactly it.”
Nureyev hums thoughtfully. He presses a little closer to Juno, and settles when Juno leans back into him. “Well,” he says, drawing out the word, “what would you like to do with her?”
“I don’t know,” Juno responds, just as soft. He scrubs another hand across his face. “Let her go?”
For Juno’s sake, Nureyev doesn’t immediately bat down the suggestion. He steadies himself, preparing to point out all the very good reasons that is a very bad idea, but Juno cuts him off. “I know, I know, she’s dangerous and she caught us once. But the thing about Dark Matters is that once you’re disgraced, you’re out for good. And she is, Ransom, she's been totally cut out. Like, I’m talking—association with her for anyone in Dark Matters would be a death sentence for them both. And Dark Matters is shady enough that without her credentials and that background, she doesn’t have a lot of clout anywhere else. Hell, Ransom, you know that personally, you posed as one of them once.”
Ah, yes. Rex Glass. As much as he instinctively hates the idea, Juno does have a point. Glass wouldn’t have been as effective in literally any other situation. Without Dark Matters looming over his shoulder, he wouldn’t have had any authority at all.
He tries to think as his love does, divorced from the instinctive fear of Sasha Wire and the havoc she’s wrought on this family. Juno isn’t wrong, he supposes; and if Juno's assessment is true, an assumption in which Nureyev has full confidence, she truly isn’t much of a threat, not severed wholly from Dark Matters as she is. There isn’t exactly a place for her to go. She’s ambitious, sure, but the family can keep an eye on her easily enough, without involving Juno if he’d like. Could subtly keep her from amassing too much power, in...whatever she chooses to do next.
“Where do you think she would go?”
Juno looks grateful that Nureyev hadn’t shot down his suggestion immediately. “I dunno,” he murmurs. “Hyperion, I guess. I...don’t think she really has anywhere else to go. Mick and I are kinda the only people she has left, and even though she’d rather die than ask him for help...I don’t know. I don’t know what she’d do. I just can’t have her on this ship, Ransom, I can’t. I know that’s selfish, and stupid, but I just...I can’t stop thinking about the fact that we were a family once. And I know she didn’t have any of the same qualms about locking up my family, but I still—”
“You are not Sasha Wire,” Nureyev interrupts, resting a comforting hand on Juno’s thigh before he starts to spiral in earnest. When Juno looks at him he smiles softly, and the anxiety wound tight in Juno’s shoulder releases. “Your morals are quite different, and you can stomach different things. Even if it isn’t what she would do, Juno, this is what you would do, and the fact that these two things are not the same is not a detriment. Honestly, Juno, I would say it’s a blessing.”
Juno swallows, then smiles, tentatively, a warm, flickering thing. He sniffs. “Yeah, Ransom. I guess so. Thanks.”
“I’m not sure the rest of the family will be of the same mind at first,” Nureyev says dryly, and is rewarded by Juno’s rueful chuckle. "Our dear doctor in particular. But if it’s what you want, Juno, I’d say it’s likely we can convince them.”
Juno turns and wraps his arms around Nureyev’s shoulders. Into his ear he whispers, “Thanks, Nureyev.”
Nureyev feels his face crease with a warm smile. He turns his face into the crook of Juno’s neck and, to the patch of scarred skin there, he whispers, “Of course, love.”
Nureyev is right, in the end. Vespa rages and swears and points out everything Juno had: that Sasha hardly deserves a mercy she hadn’t given herself, that her moral core is rotted through from decades serving under Dark Matters, that they’ll have to keep tabs on her and cut her off at the knees if push comes to shove; but in the end Juno only really has to say that it makes him sick to have her on board this ship and he doesn’t know what else to do. It’s Jet that concedes first, then Buddy and Rita, before Vespa begrudgingly follows suit.
Later that same day Buddy escorts Sasha to their smallest and least reliable escape pod—a rather petty detail that they hadn’t discussed beforehand, but that Nureyev has no doubt that the Captain added herself—and waves her off with a sharpened smile.
Just before she climbs in, her hands still bound, she meets Juno’s eye. Juno meets her gaze, and for a moment—just a moment—he looks terrified.
Then she nods, and he visibly straightens and nods in return.
She steps into the pod. Jet seals the door behind her, and she’s ejected into the void of space.
Juno watches her craft trail away. The five of them trickle out, and Juno murmurs that he’ll rejoin them soon.
He doesn’t. When Nureyev retrieves him, hours later, he’s sitting in front of the escape pod’s hatch, knees pulled to his chest and arms crossed over them, quietly looking out at the stars.
“—and if they got ‘em get me those squid ink ones too, boss! I don’t need too many, maybe a couple dozen if they’ve got ‘em in stock but they’re real important ‘cause I ain’t had them in like a whole year!”
“Okay, new rule,” Juno growls through their earpieces, “next time Rita takes up more than half the grocery list, someone else is doing the goddamn shopping.”
“Aw, but boss, it ain’t even that much!”
“Sure, not by your standards, but this is ridiculous! They shouldn’t even have this many types of snack!”
“Yes they totally should and you should be grateful for ‘em, boss, ‘cause they’ve saved your life a whole buncha times! So quit your complainin’ and get me my snacks!”
“Fine,” Juno snarls, “god, Rita, fine! Anyone else want me to get them some samples of the bane of nutritionists across the goddamn galaxy while I’m out here, or are we good?”
With a poorly-hidden laugh in her voice, Buddy says, “I think we’re all right, darling.”
“Thank god,” Juno grumbles. In the background he can hear chatter, clamoring, transactions made in Common with side-negotiations in a dozen different languages. One day perhaps Nureyev will teach Juno another language. Not Brahmese, not yet, but Rangian. With Vespa’s help, maybe, if she’d deign to help him.
Rita catches Nureyev’s eye across the room and grins, a private, cheeky little thing that has Nureyev chuckling to himself. They both know well that the grumbling is for show, that Juno would move mountains for her. She’s been in Dark Matters’ custody for months. Juno would buy her mountains of snacks, if she asked.
His comms pings with a direct message, and Nureyev reads it and laughs. A little bit of the anxiety in his body drains. Rita’s said, you know you could ask him for somethin special too Mista Ransom! he’d be real happy to get somethin a little more...intimate, and then she’s appended a winky face, the default emojis modified to resemble her face.
“I do think he’d kill me for good,” Nureyev says aloud, wry, and in the back of his mind he is thinking about how soon she won’t have to use his alias on the Blanche’s private network. By tomorrow, they’ll all know his name.
The thought still terrifies him. But he remembers the pride in Juno’s eye when he’d brought it up, just two days ago outside the medbay, and steadies his breathing. He can do this. He wants them to know. They’ve earned that much, he thinks, and he trusts them.
Despite his better instincts, he trusts them.
Juno’s voice crackles over the comms, different this time. “Guys,” he says quietly, “something’s wrong.”
“What, they ain’t available or somethin’?”
“No. I don’t know what it is, but it’s too...quiet.”
“Perhaps the market’s having an off day, darling,” Buddy says lightly, but her brow is furrowed.
“Yeah, maybe,” Juno says, sounding unconvinced. “Hell, maybe that stand in the corner’s really valuable or something. Not like I can see what’s in it through all these hills.”
Nureyev smiles to himself. Juno’s huffing and puffing is audible through the comms, and it’s only the camaraderie that comes from a year of teamwork that keeps a silently sniggering Vespa from commenting on his physical state. Jet has his head in one hand. Juno, despite all of Jet’s efforts, had skipped their standing gym appointment this morning, and Jet has yet to have an opportunity to chew him out for it. His love will be in for quite the lecture when he returns to the Carte Blanche.
Jet picks his head up out of his hands, then calmly moves a piece forward on the chessboard spread between himself and Vespa. Vespa goes to make a return move, until Buddy, twined around her and looking over her shoulder, whispers something in her ear and taps a piece. Vespa furrows her brow, and moves that piece instead. Jet, well used to this by now, doesn’t protest.
In the background, Nureyev hears Juno slow to a halt, still panting. He shakes his head to himself, smiling slightly as he marks his page in his magazine with the tip of one finger. He takes a deep breath, mind still wandering to the confession he will very likely make in this same room tomorrow, and breaths out just as slow.
When he inhales again, Juno says, “Oh hell.”
Buddy’s eyes lift from the board. “Juno?”
“Oh no,” he says quietly. In the background, the sounds of the market dim, and there are rhythmic thumps, like footsteps, retreating. Dread chills through Nureyev’s spine. “Oh, no.”
He presses a finger to his ear, just as Juno’s footsteps start to sound, faster this time. He’s running. Nureyev stands. “Love?”
“I don’t know how they found us,” Juno breathes, frantic. “Jet, take the ship and get ready to go.”
“What is it? What’s happening?”
“It’s—”
“Juno Steel,” says another voice, barely audible through the comms, and Juno’s footsteps skid. The inflection of the voice is unmistakable. It’s Dark Matters.
Nureyev leaps to his feet. Jet stands, sending the chessboard scattering, and together they peel toward the garage and the hovercycle it holds. Nureyev takes a moment to silently curse that Juno had taken the Ruby with him, but no matter. As long as Juno can stall, they’ll make it there in time.
“To what do I owe the pleasure?” Juno asks, wary, and Nureyev’s heartbeat pounds in his throat. Jet leaps onto the hovercycle, the door opening as behind them Buddy slams the control panel, and the engine is already revving by the time Nureyev joins him on the back. Jet draws his blaster, and Nureyev his throwing knife.
“You have been found in violation of Directive 238.115,” the voice says, and Juno snaps, “What the hell do I care, we both know you just made that up!”
“This is quite real,” the agent’s voice says. Jet peels out into the open air over the market, and steers the cycle into a steep dive. There in the distance Nureyev can see them: the agent and Juno, both hardly blurs against the cobbled street. “For the theft of property from Dark Matters, you will be executed.”
“Property?” Juno sounds indignant. “They weren’t property! They’re people, damn you, they’re my family!”
“A confession. Restrain him.”
From a distance Nureyev sees Juno forced to kneel. Juno struggles against the agent holding him in place, terrified snarl visible even from here.
Nureyev’s throat squeezes painfully tight. “Jet.”
“I see him,” Jet grates out in response. “Only a few more moments and we will be within range.”
“Any last words?”
“Oh, I’ve got plenty to say,” Juno spits. “I’d use a couple last words trying to appeal to your consciences, except I’m pretty goddamn sure that none of you have a conscience to—”
The line screeches. In the distance, past the sudden silence in their earpieces, Juno crumples forward. His body hangs from the hand of the agent holding him by the shoulder.
He’s still on his knees.
Nureyev thinks he makes a noise. Jet slams the accelerator. The voice says, “Let the record note the confession. Cause of death was one full charge from a Model 1850 CGV-J blaster. Agents, take the corpse.”
Nureyev feels distant. The wheels of the hovercycle skim over the cobblestone; behind him, there’s the sound of another engine as Buddy’s cycle roars in pursuit. Jet levels his blaster and fires.
The agent holding Juno’s shoulder falls. His own knives flash, and miss, and flash again.
They get away.
They get away with Juno’s body.
Nureyev realizes distantly that he’s covered in blood. Most of it isn’t his own. The agent Jet had shot has a smoking shoulder; a kill shot, but not aimed accurately enough to end him. Jet is standing over him, in the wake of the Dark Matters cruiser disappearing into the sky, his blaster leveled in one steady hand toward the head of the crumpled agent.
Nureyev kneels. Jet’s jaw tightens, and he fires.
Vespa hurls her knife into the ground. On the thick, cobbled stone, the blade bends beyond repair. Buddy walks over and sets a hand on Jet’s shoulder, looking down at the agent he felled.
“Guys? Is he...is Mista Steel okay?”
Nureyev flicks off his earpiece. Somewhere in the distance, Jet’s voice reports that Juno is dead. All he can think, as his knees press into the gravel, as his gaze turns up, is that they don’t even have his body.
“We should chase them down,” Vespa snarls. “Shoot them right the hell out of the sky.”
“And risk drawing their ire to us,” Buddy points out calmly. She begins to speak and clears her throat, drawing a shuddering breath. “It’s not worth it, darling. He...wouldn’t want that.”
“What the hell do we know about what he would want?” Vespa snaps. “It’s not like we ever asked!”
“Then perhaps it is simply what I want, and I am projecting once more,” Buddy retorts sharply. “I don’t—I can’t risk you. I can’t risk any of you.”
“I don’t care,” Vespa snarls. “Let me take the hauler, let me take—let me take his hauler. They won’t even see me coming. I’ll blow them out of the goddamn sky.”
“No, Vespa.”
“We can’t just let them get away with this!”
“The Captain is right,” Nureyev hears himself say, and he stands, turning to look at Vespa. He has no idea what his face looks like, but whatever it is, Vespa physically recoils. That should horrify him, he thinks. “He would not want us to put ourselves at risk. Not for revenge.”
“This isn’t—we can’t just—” Vespa bares her teeth and snarls, a furious, defeated sound. “We have to do something!”
Distantly Nureyev thinks that he should find his knife. He’d thrown it, he thinks, just after—
He walks away. Dust, kicked up from a hundred hasty retreats, hangs over the ground, empty wooden stands sticking up from the ground like bones. Faint, the smell of sweet fruits and roasted meats disappears onto the wind. Aside from the faint stirring of a distant breeze, there is no sound.
“Pete,” Buddy calls after him. “Peter.”
“Just a moment, Captain,” he replies. “I’m not sure where my knife landed.”
He has no idea what she thinks of that, but he hardly cares. He walks until he finds it, lodged in the stone. He picks it up; the blade is nicked, the divot deep enough that no amount of whittling will salvage it. In a blank sort of way he’s impressed with himself. He hadn’t known he had the strength to throw a knife so far, or to lodge it so firmly into the ground.
He wipes the blood off on his shirt. He’d hit something, at least, even if it wasn’t near enough the heart to do any actual damage. From the distance he and Jet were at, that’s quite the accomplishment.
He walks back to the family. He looks at them each, and then does a double-take to look again at Jet. Jet is crying.
Buddy clears her throat and says, “Shall we?”
Rita’s sitting in the same seat when they return. Buddy says, “It looks like we’ll have to get the snacks later, darling,” and Rita bursts promptly into tears. Jet sits by her and pulls her close to his chest, and she goes, clutching his shirt. It’s torn and stained with the dirt that their little gunfight had blown from the marketplace streets, but Rita doesn’t seem to care as she buries her forehead against his chest.
Nureyev looks at the cushion of the couch he’d been sitting upon no more than ten minutes ago, and remembers the confession he’d been so excited to make.
Buddy turns to him and says, “Ransom, darling....”
“Nureyev,” he corrects. Vespa turns to stare at him and he does not meet her gaze. He looks directly at Buddy and says, “It’s Nureyev.”
He’s not sure why he’s telling them this. Perhaps it’s grief clouding his judgment. Perhaps he cannot bear to make his name a secret again. Perhaps it is because all he can think about is the fact that he will never again hear Juno speak his name.
The thought nearly sends him to his knees. Instead of allowing it, he wraps up that thought and shoves into a corner of his mind that he will never explore again.
“You?”
The question, incredulous and almost angry, comes from Vespa. This time Nureyev meets her gaze and says, calmly, “Me.”
“The Angel of Brahma,” she snarls, fists clenched at her sides. “You. You’re saying you’re him?”
“I am,” he says, and spreads his hands out from his body. If he had the penchant for poetry of his love, perhaps he would fancy them wings. But he doesn’t, so instead they are simply the blood-covered hands of the boy who killed his father.
“That’s not funny.”
“I’m not joking.”
“Go to hell,” Vespa spits. “Fuck you. There’s no way you were hiding that.”
“Why not?”
In truth, he expects her to tell him that he’s too pathetic to have felled a satellite, that he could never have been Brahmese, or any other number of things he knows for certain she’s thought about him. Instead, all she says is, “You wouldn’t be hiding that.”
Again, he asks, “Why not?”
“Because that’s not something to hide,” she growls. “The Angel of Brahma’s a goddamn hero. If you’d done something like that you wouldn’t shut up about—”
“I killed my father,” he says simply. “That day, I killed my father, and he did not fight back. Forgive me if I do not consider myself a hero.”
That takes the words from her mouth. At her side, Buddy says, “How old were you?”
Nureyev smiles. “A teenager,” he says. “Less than a man.”
“A child,” Buddy murmurs. “Pete, I...I’m so sorry.”
“Whatever for?”
“The story of the Angel isn’t a happy one,” she says, then asks, “Why did you tell us?”
For that, he has no answer.
Buddy waits calmly. Beside her, Vespa looks him up and down, her teeth bared in a half-snarl as she reassesses him. Rita’s wiping her eyes and looking at him, and Jet has a curious expression on his face, head tilted as he looks at Nureyev.
Nureyev decides, for once, to tell the truth. “I have no idea,” he says quietly. “Juno and I discussed it. He knew, of course. He knew the whole sordid story. The original plan was to tell you tomorrow, but I’ve decided to sever the wait. Captain,” he says, addressing Buddy directly. “If you’d like me to leave the crew, I will disembark here.”
He’ll skirt the market. There’s an interplanetary hub in this very city, no more than three hours’ walk. If he’s lucky, Jet may even let him take the hovercycle. Nureyev’s not sure he could stomach riding it again, but if he must, then he will.
“Pete,” she says quietly. “We’re not kicking you off the crew.”
He feels obligated to inform her. “That decision is poorly-informed, Captain,” he says, clasping his hands behind his back. “I killed my father, as I may remind you. The only people who call me by my first name are ones who I have allowed to be a parental figure.” When she doesn’t immediately recoil, he tells her, “That number is three. You’re the third.” He smiles. “The first two, I killed.”
He expects, at least, for Vespa to reach for her knife. Instead she says, emphatically, “Fuck this,” and stalks from the room.
Buddy watches her go. Then she steps forward. Nureyev tamps down on the urge to step back. Instead of shooting him, she puts a hand on her shoulder and says, “Do you mind if I continue to call you Pete, or would you prefer Nureyev?”
Hearing his name from her lips is like a jolt of adrenaline. It shatters the protective haze of numbness that had shrouded him since he watched Juno die, and suddenly he is hurting.
His shoulders bow. He finds, to his horror, that his eyes are beginning to sting. He clears his throat rather desperately and says, as steadily as he can, “Pete works fine.”
“Pete it is, then,” Buddy says softly, and then, to his shock, she pulls him into a hug.
He should pull away. He doesn’t. Instead he buries his face in her shoulder and does not allow himself to cry.
With his hands still linked behind his back, his control of his voice regained, he whispers, “I remind you that I just threatened to kill you, Captain.”
“You did no such thing,” Buddy says gently, and pushes him back to hold him at arm’s length, her hand comforting on his shoulder. “You told me that I should fear your intent to do so. However, I am quite certain that you mean to do no such thing.”
“That’s foolish.”
“I don’t think it is.”
“I remind you, Captain,” he says, as steadily as he can, “that you yourself once noted my ability to excise my moral core. You yourself fear that I could still do it.”
“Once, yes,” she murmurs, “though you’re using the wrong tense, darling. More accurately would be feared.” She smiles, a little sad. “I don’t fear you, Pete.”
“Perhaps you should.”
“Perhaps.” Her fingers tilt his chin to meet her gaze. “But my judgement is rarely wrong, darling. So I don’t.”
That night, he finds that he cannot sleep.
Juno advised him many times to let himself feel what he would. That advice, of course, had been predicated on the assumption that Juno would be there to help him through it. He is not, but Juno’s advice is lasting enough that he cannot seem to stop himself from feeling what he will, even though ‘what he will’ is a crushing, breath-stealing sort of agony, and Juno is not there to wipe away his tears, nor reassure him that everything will be okay.
Because it won’t, of course. Right now it seems to Nureyev that very little will be okay.
He stands up. Errant feet lead him through the halls of the ship, and he is returned to thinking of nothing at all. A thought drifts past his consciousness, unmoored and whispering: three months ago he would’ve sooner cut off his own leg than be seen walking about the halls of the Carte Blanche without his makeup on.
He reaches the common room. Jet is already there. Somehow, though they have never met at this hour in this particular place, Nureyev is unsurprised.
Jet moves over obligingly to make room for Nureyev on the couch. Nureyev, who had not intended to sit there, changes course. Jet says, “Good morning, Nureyev.”
Nureyev blinks. “I suppose it is morning. Good morning, then, Jet.”
“Will it bother you for me to call you by your last name?”
For some reason, Nureyev chokes up again. He manages to scrape out, “No.”
Jet nods.
The dark is soothing. He can’t see the corners of the room, can hardly even see Jet’s face. Despite the danger of it, Nureyev regains his breath and leans back against the cushions, drained in a way he has not been since—well, since he left the family behind to be captured by Dark Matters.
“Rita is not well,” Jet says into the silence. “I knocked on her door an hour ago. She did not want me to come in.”
Nureyev says, “Oh.”
Whatever he’d conveyed with that response, Jet seems to understand, because he says, “Indeed. She...is not usually so solitary.”
Nureyev nods. In the darkness, Jet cannot see the motion. Normally, he thinks, Rita would likely cling to hope that Juno were alive, but this time—
Not this time.
Neither of them move much, nor speak. The only illumination in the room comes from the stars twinkling outside. Absently Nureyev identifies them. They are passing through the Kuiper belt.
Sometime soon he will have to return here to settle his debts.
Once, that thought would terrify him. Now he thinks this with the suspicion that, should he return, he will not do so alone.
Footsteps sound—stomp, really—down the hall. They both look up just in time to catch the door cycling in, the dim hallway lights of the Blanche briefly silhouetting Vespa Ilkay from behind. She stops when she sees them, then mutters under her breath and passes them on the way to the kitchen. None of them speak.
She pulls out a pot and sets it on the stove. The refrigerator opens, then the pantry. Each close. As Nureyev watches over her shoulder, Vespa turns her back on the stove, catches them watching, and growls, “Hot chocolate.”
Nureyev says, “Ah.”
A customary ritual, he knows. Shared between herself and Juno, when their nightmares awoke them at the same time.
When the milk heats, Vespa adds the chocolate. She stirs, more constantly and mindfully than Nureyev suspects she otherwise would have. A few minutes pass, and then she frowns at it and turns off the burner and pours herself a mug.
She sits in a chair across from them. Then she looks at them, and a thought visibly occurs to her as she asks, “Do...do you guys want any?”
Both of them shake their heads. “Good,” Vespa mutters, more to herself than them. “Didn’t make enough for all three of us anyway.”
She drains her mug in sips. Nureyev looks at his hands. They’re more nicked than they were last year, he realizes, far more so; small pale scars from burning himself on the stovetop, little nicks from mishandling a knife or misjudging a distance. Whenever Nureyev had burned something in the kitchen—and on the rare occasion he burned the kitchen itself—Juno had laughed and laughed. It hadn’t seemed so embarrassing, just the two of them, Juno laughing with him.
None of them are really surprised when the door cycles open to admit Buddy. She, on the other hand, laughs quietly when she sees them. Soundlessly, she takes the seat next to Vespa, and sits with a straight back.
“I’m not used to quite so much company this late,” she says, just this side of too quiet. “I would say it’s nice, but....”
“It is not,” Jet finishes.
“No,” she says. “It isn’t.”
She looks at the mug, then to Vespa’s face. She knows, as they all do, that there is enough left in the pot—cooled for now, but easily reheated—for one more.
She doesn’t ask for it, of course. Vespa didn’t make it for her.
Around them, galactic night spins into day.