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Chapter Text

The guy who had recruited her at the dockside hadn’t given her much to go on. He had seemed distracted but in the kind of way that made Jean think that he was always like that. She made her way to the berth he’d indicated, and saw the ship he had barely described - big viewport on the front, not as big as it seemed from the outside. The name, The Eve was scrawled across the side in light-coloured paint. This one fit the bill, so she approached the gantry connecting it to the dock. There was someone there. He was tall and good looking like the one who had recruited her, with thick hair that looked like he’d bleached it and then stained it with engine oil.

“Are you the medic?” he asked as she approached.

“Yeah, I’m Jean,” she said, nodding. She didn’t give her surname and he didn’t ask for it. Her instincts from talking to the aloof captain had been correct then; this was the kind of ship where no one asked questions. She would fit right in. The man with the orange hair directed her up the gantry to the cargo bay, where she saw the captain from yesterday.

“Can I help you?” he asked, without a spark of recognition.

“I- um, we met yesterday? You hired me. Captain Oh, right?”

The captain blinked at her for a couple of seconds and then nodded like this was all a test of her memory skills anyway. A shout came from the back of the cargo bay, followed by a crash and a loud swear. Seconds later, another man emerged from between the crates. Was everyone on this ship gigantic?

“Sehun, we need to find a better place to store the power ce-” he caught sight of Jean and stopped talking. He had silver hair and huge eyes and was looking at her curiously.

“This is the doctor,” the captain said, gesturing towards Jean but not introducing the other man. He turned to face her. “I am Sehun. No one calls me Captain.” The way he said this told her that he wished they did. A silence stretched out and he looked at her expectantly. Jean cracked first.

“Where should I go?” she asked.

“There’s an empty cabin on the second deck, port side,” the other man said, gesturing towards the staircase behind him. He stretched out a long arm to shake her hand. “I’m Chanyeol,” he said, grinning. She couldn’t help but smile back. Sehun had gone back to scrolling through data on his display, and Jean assumed she was dismissed.

The cabin she had been directed to was occupied when she arrived. A man was sweeping, humming softly to himself. He looked up when she knocked, like he had been expecting her.

“The doctor,” he said.

“That’s me. I’m Jean,” she said.

The man gestured towards a berth that didn’t have any sheets on it. “Let me finish this and I’ll leave you to get settled. I’m Minseok.”

“Nice to meet you,” Jean said, stowing her duffel bag in the locker by the bed. “I assume you’re… maintenance?” It was a fair guess; he was standing there with a brush. He chuckled softly, and started to gather the dust on the floor into a pile.

“I’m the XO,” he said. “And I fly sometimes. Have you met the rest of the crew?”

Jean was taken aback. What was the executive officer doing cleaning out empty cabins? She decided to ask.

“I like things to be neat,” was all he said in response. Jean decided that this was probably the only answer she was likely to get. He knelt down and sucked the dust up into a small handheld vacuum.

“I met the captain,” Jean said, remembering his question. “And you, now. And Chanyeol, and a man with orange hair-”

“That’s Jongin,” Minseok said.

“Are there many others?” she asked, sitting down on the bed and watching him finish his work. His black hair was long at the front and kept dipping into his eyes. Jean made it a rule to never associate too closely with the crew of the ships she worked on, but she thought she wouldn’t mind a little association with this man, the neat XO.

“There’s a pilot and a cook,” Minseok said. “And- well,” he stopped himself and shook his head. “There’s other crew but they’re not all… here. Right now.”

Jean frowned. What did that mean?

“I’ll let you get settled,” he said, and backed out. “We usually eat together, I’ll make an announcement over the intercom.”

“Where, um, where do I work?” she asked quickly, before he could leave.

“The med-bay is on the lower deck, over the cargo bay,” he said. “Let me just get rid of this,” he waved the brush, “and I’ll show you down.”

Jean nodded and he left. As she unpacked she worried at her lip. She was nervous of mercenaries in general. They were unpredictable, but this ship was the only one going in her direction. It was unlikely that anyone would recognise her, but all the same. She would have to keep her guard up.

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Sehun was right: the ship wasn’t as big as it looked from the outside. There were only five decks. Minseok showed Jean the med-bay, which overlooked the cargo bay on one side. He left her there, but there was nothing for her to do after she had inspected the small space, so she went exploring. No one had told her she couldn’t, and Jean had always been careful when joining a new ship to familiarise herself with the space in case she needed to escape at speed. She scoped out the two emergency pods first; they weren’t locked, but one of them was being used as some sort of tiny lounge space. Someone had padded the crash couch with cushions, and there was a speaker in there. It was absolutely not safe to use as an emergency pod. She shut the door quietly and moved on. On the level above her cabin, there was a galley. She was scoping out the kitchen area when a crash made her jump.

“Oh,” said a soft, deep voice from the pantry. Jean looked around the door jamb.

“Hello?”

A man was standing inside, surrounded by collapsed tins of dehydrated vegetables. He looked around curiously; if he was shocked by the appearance of a stranger, he didn’t show it.

“Are you alright?” Jean asked. She looked at the empty shelf beside his head from which the cans must have fallen. He nodded at her, with a faint smile. It was a lovely smile, warm and open.

“I’m fine,” he said. “Thank you. Who are you?”

“Jean,” she said. “I’m the medic. I’m here until you reach Corwen.” The industrial supply planet was a transport hub; it wasn’t even nearly where she needed to go, but it would be easy to catch another ship from there.

The man frowned slightly.

“We’re going to Corwen?”

Jean blinked at him. Weren’t they?

“Aren’t you?”

The man shrugged and grinned at her. “I just cook the food. They don’t always tell me where we’re going.” He stepped forward, holding out his hand. “I’m Kyungsoo.”

He had a firmer handshake than she was expecting. There was a quiet kind of strength to him, though he was slight compared to the other crew members she had met so far. She felt herself warming to him. “Are you taking a tour of the ship?” he asked, and Jean nodded.

Kyungsoo walked her back out into the galley.

“This is where we eat. We usually have dinner together.”

“Yes, Minseok told me.”

“Ah, you met Minseok? Have you met everyone else?” Kyungsoo looked around like he expected the other crew members to be standing around.

“I think your pilot is the only crew member I haven’t met,” Jean said, and Kyungsoo started to walk her out of the galley. She initially thought he was ushering her out so he could get back to work, but he led her to a short ladder up to the top deck, and the bridge.

Inside, there were six chairs all facing a viewport. The soft beep of the navigation system was just audible over the whirr of the air conditioning, but Jean imagined it got loud in here while the ship was underway. One of the front seats was occupied. Kyungsoo led Jean forward to where the final crew member of The Eve was sitting with his legs propped on the dash, singing softly and reviewing what looked like a flightplan on his tablet.

“Baekhyun,” Kyungsoo called softly. Everything he said was said softly, Jean noted.

The pilot shifted around in his seat and peered up at her curiously.

“Ah. You’re our passenger, is that right?” He made no move to stand. Jean felt awkward. She introduced herself and he answered her introduction with a faint, unreadable smile. He had very intent eyes and Jean had to force herself to look away. Kyungsoo sat down and took the tablet from Baekhyun, checking the flight path himself.

“Jean said we’re going to Corwen,” he said, and Baekhyun nodded.

“That’s the plan. There’s a debris field in our way, so I’m trying to replot the route so we only lose a couple of days.” Baekhyun said all of this without taking his eyes off of Jean. He smiled at her faintly again before he turned the full force of his attention on Kyungsoo. “Why are you up here? Are we ready to go? I’m bored, so please say yes.” His manner shifted. He tapped the side of his chair and grinned with nervous energy.

Kyungsoo shrugged and stood up, passing the tablet back. “I was just showing Jean the cockpit,” he said. “And I wanted to make sure we were going to Corwen. We can get some decent spices at the market in Fengi,” he said.

Baekhyun shook his head. “We won’t be there long,” he said, and gave Kyungsoo a meaningful look. Kyungsoo raised his eyebrows. Jean blinked and whatever was going on between them passed.

Someone clambered up the ladder behind them. Jean turned and saw that it was the tall one from the cargo bay, Chanyeol. She hadn’t worked out exactly what his role on the ship was. He saw her and beamed, then turned to Baekhyun.

“Are we ready to go?” he asked. He was practically vibrating with energy.

“No one told me to go,” Baekhyun said with a shrug.

“Minseok told me we were leaving in an hour.” Chanyeol flopped down into one of the back chairs. Wasn’t there a chain of command on this ship? They acted more like a family than a team of mercenaries.

Kyungsoo took Jean’s elbow and led her towards the back of the cockpit. He pointed towards a spot on the wall, where she could make out a pull-down crash couch. “You should check your cabin is secure and strap yourself in.” He turned back towards Baekhyun. “Our pilot can be a bit rough on take-off.”

Baekhyun swore at him good-naturedly. Chanyeol stood up again. “Can I help?” he asked, approaching Jean. She was mildly alarmed by this; in the small space of the cockpit he was a lot bigger than he seemed in the cavernous cargo bay. Still, she was touched by his concern. This was a strange kind of mercenary ship. Everyone seemed… nice. They ribbed each other but there wasn’t any unpleasantness to it. The mercs she had taken passage with in the past had been different. Those ships were tense places, barely-contained violence and competition hanging in the air. She had always had to double-check that her cabin was locked, and that the opioids in the med bay were secure. The Eve wasn’t like that. It felt comfortable. This was a strange feeling for Jean. She gave herself a mental warning not to get complacent around these people. They were strangers, and she had no idea what they would do if they found out what she was worth.
She politely declined Chanyeol’s offer to help her secure her belongings. Even so, he climbed down the ladder with her and Kyungsoo saying he had to double-check something on the cargo deck. Kyungsoo wandered off towards the galley, presumably to restack the cans he had left on the floor of the pantry, and Chanyeol walked Jean to her cabin.

“Let me know, if you need anything,” he said, when she reached her door. “Let any of us know. You’re crew, now. One of us.” When he turned to wave as he continued down the corridor, the look he gave her was so genuine, so sincere, that she almost believed him.

Chapter Text

The first confirmation that Jean had that something was off about this group of men came later that day, after dinner. After they left port, a procedure that was every bit as bumpy as Kyungsoo promised with no apologies from the gleeful pilot, the crew all filtered back to their respective parts of the ship until a bell sounded over the intercom. Jean was down in the med-bay, unpacking her small equipment bag into drawers. She was standing right next to the speaker and dropped a box of dressings when the bell sounded. Rolls of bandage spun across the floor and Jean knelt down to pick them up. There was a heavy step in the doorway and someone handed her a bandage. Jean looked up to find the engineer, Jongin, smiling kindly at her about ten centimetres in front of her face. She flinched back and lost her balance, and found herself on her back, looking up at him.

“Are you alright?” he asked, holding out a long-fingered hand to help her up. Jean, feeling her face start to burn, mumbled something like ‘yeah fine’ and let him pull her to her feet. When she was standing again, he crouched and scooped up the last few bandages, handing them up to her.

“That’s the dinner bell,” he said, when she had stowed them in a cupboard.

“Ah, that makes sense. The crew eat together, right?”

“Yes,” Jongin walked to the door and beckoned her to follow. She took a glance around, then walked out after him. “I didn’t know if you knew where the galley was yet, so I thought I’d come get you.”

That was kind of him, and she told him so. He just shrugged his broad shoulders.

Everyone was already in the galley by the time they arrived. Chanyeol was in the kitchen helping Kyungsoo, and the others were sitting around the big table shouting incoherently at each other. Jongin directed Jean to an empty seat and took up the place between Sehun and Baekhyun.

“At least I didn’t ram the bulkhead into the dock at Serruse,” Baekhyun was saying, throwing an accusing gesture in Minseok’s direction.

“It didn’t do any damage,” Minseok said, shrugging as he tapped his hands rhythmically on the table.

“The autopilot does a neater job of docking this ship than you do,” Baekhyun laughed, gesturing towards the ladder to the cockpit where the autopilot was, presumably, managing the ship in his absence.

“How do you know there was no damage?” Jongin countered Minseok. “I had to go out there in an environment suit and check the seals.”

“Yes,” Sehun said, nodding sagely. “I hated doing that. It was dangerous.”

Jongin shot him an incredulous look. “You didn’t do anything out there.”

“I went out in an environment suit with you,” Sehun said.

“You sat down and watched the other ships docking. You kept asking me what their call signs were and what class they belonged to, it was really distracting.” Jongin was laughing even as he said this. Sehun set his mouth in a line like he thought he had made a very important contribution.

Chanyeol carried a huge pot over and set it in the centre of the table. Kyungsoo followed with more food, and Chanyeol came back with a stack of bowls, handing one to Jean before distributing them to the rest of the crew.

“Careful,” he said, when he sat down next to her. “It’s hot.”

Jean nodded; she could feel the heat off the pot from where she was sitting. He reached out and took her bowl, scooping out a huge measure of stew into it before he handed it back. Then he did the same for everybody else, and they set to eating.

They made very short work of the food, but it didn’t stop them talking constantly all through the meal. Jean struggled to keep up with the pace of both the eating and the talking, eventually giving up on the latter in favour of the former. The food was good, surprisingly so for ship fare. She noticed that Kyungsoo watched the others eat, passing a side dish if he thought they should try it, and only actually eating from his own bowl once everybody else had nearly finished their first portions. There was plenty, too, so they all went back for seconds.

Jean realised halfway through the meal that she had been waiting for something, some argument to break out, or for somebody to pull rank. That had been the way of crews she had served with in the past, where mealtimes (if they were even adhered to) were always slightly fraught with tension. Not here; eating with the crew of The Eve was like eating with a family.

Chanyeol finished first and stood up, easily lifting the pot to take back to the kitchen and clean. Jean had been sitting close enough to it to still feel its heat as he lifted it over the table. It was still red-hot, even though there was nothing inside. It was only later, hours later, when she was lying in her narrow cabin bunk, listening to the low hum of the ship underway, that she realised: he wasn’t anything to protect his hands against the heat.

Chapter Text

At first, she couldn’t work out what it was that had woken her up. She tossed in her bunk, almost falling out, and then realised that it was the shipboard alarm, blaring through the hallway outside. She overbalanced and flipped herself out of the bunk and onto the coarse carpet of the cabin floor.

“Ow,” Jean muttered, pushing herself to her feet. She was pulling on a sweater over her pyjamas when someone knocked urgently but politely on her door. It was Minseok.

“Hello,” he said, clearly feeling uncomfortable about disturbing her in the night (emergency alert notwithstanding).

“What’s happened?” Jean asked, walking out into the corridor and shutting her door behind her. Minseok started to walk towards the stairs down to the lower levels.

“We’re docking with another ship, so we need you to go down to the med bay. There might be…” he trailed off. Might be what?

“Might be?”

“There might not,” he said with a firm nod, trying to reassure her. He was very sincere, his lovely eyes imploring. It might have worked if she knew what the hell he was talking about.

“Why are we docking with another ship?” Jean asked, following him down the stairs.

“There was a distress call, and-”

At that moment, Chanyeol came dashing up the stairs from the lower decks. He was in full body-armour, an automatic rifle slung over one shoulder. “Have you seen Sehun?” he demanded.

“He’s in the cockpit,” Minseok told him. Chanyeol nodded and rushed past, giving Jean a tight smile as he did so. He stopped at the top of the stairs, and called down to Minseok.

“Is it one of theirs?”

“Baekhyun thinks so,” Minseok said, gravely. Theirs? Minseok walked her as far as the med bay and then left her, making for engineering. Down here, it was obvious to Jean that the ship was docked. The high-whine of the fusion drive, a constant soundtrack down here while the ship was underway, was conspicuously absent. The door to the cargo bay was still closed, but through the windows of the med bay she could see the light beside the door; it was green. They were ready to board, then.

Jean looked around and wondered what it was she was supposed to be doing. Minseok hadn’t actually told her what was going on. At that moment, Kyunsoo bustled in with a small box that

Jean recognised as a holographic transponder. A communications device?

“I’m here in case you need a runner,” Kyungsoo said, setting up the transponder on one of the empty counters.

“Kyungsoo, what’s happening? Minseok said we were docking, but he didn’t tell me anything.”

The emergency siren stopped, and Chanyeol thundered down the stairs, Minseok on his heels. He was wearing full body armour now too. Kyungsoo watched them, anxiety lending his soft features an air of vulnerability. Minseok keyed in the opening sequence on the door.

“Kyungsoo?” Jean prompted him.

“We docked with another ship,” he said, without taking his eyes from the door. “We don’t- they may not be friendly. We’re here in case anyone gets hurt.” He turned to her and gave her a wan smile. “They won’t,” he said. “They’re very good at keeping themselves safe.”

Jean nodded, filling in the blanks that Minseok had left earlier. There might be casualties. Including himself. Jean felt a small twist of anxiety in her gut that was both unexpected and unwelcome. What did she care about these men who she had known less than a week? She busied herself setting out her dressings, alongside some vials of morphine and antibiotics. She had no idea what she would be facing but she had spent enough time on mercenary ships to know how to treat a maser burn. Kyungsoo watched the door for a minute or so after the others had disappeared down the gantry, and then turned back to watch her work.

“Do you need some help?” he asked. Jean shook her head.

“What is that for?” she asked, gesturing towards the transponder.

“Ah,” Kyungsoo walked over to the transponder and finished setting it up, typing something into the small interface on the top. “This is in case you need any advice.” He pushed a button and a holographic figure shot from the projector on top.

It was a dark-haired man, standing with his arms folded, and staring straight at Jean.

“Oh… hello,” she muttered, for lack of anything better to say.

“Hello,” said the man. He turned and regarded Kyungsoo, who was staring at the door again. “Kyungsoo, is this the new medic?”

“Yes, this is Jean,” Kyungsoo said quietly, without looking at the machine.

“Hello,” Jean said again, lamely.

“I am Yixing,” he said. He said his name like a title. He wasn’t unfriendly-sounding, exactly. More… direct.

“Are you a doctor?” she asked. It was a reasonable assumption. Why else would Kyungsoo have brought the transponder down here? She wondered where this man was, and then remembered what Minseok had said the day she joined The Eve, that there were other crew. Was this one of them? She realised that Yixing hadn’t answered her. He seemed to be playing with a datapad, and she assumed she was dismissed for the time being. Then he spoke up.

“I set up the med bay on the ship,” he said, by way of answer. “And I can help if you need help. Kyungsoo, how long have they been gone?”

“Four minutes,” Kyungsoo said, glancing at his watch.

“Baekhyun said it was a light cruiser. It shouldn’t be long.”

Kyungsoo hummed in agreement. Jean wondered what they were talking about. She knew nothing about ship classes. She didn’t know what a ‘light cruiser’ would mean. Were they pirates, the ship they were boarding? Or this strange crew, were they the pirates? She didn’t judge; out here, on the fringes of Force-controlled space, you did what you could to survive.

Yixing and Kyungsoo continued to talk, exchanging what knowledge they each had about frigate-class ships and their personnel complements. Jean checked her equipment again and thought about sitting down when the intercom fizzed to life.

“They’re on their way back,” Baekhyun’s voice said, stress making his usually-carefree tone sound strained. “No pursuit, but one hit.”

Kyungsoo sprinted out of the med bay and ran for the door. Yixing looked at Jean.

“Get ready,” he said. “If you need surgical assistance, tell me.”

Jean wondered how he could possibly help, given that he was a hologram, but she nodded anyway. Any help was help, and she was trained as a physician not a surgeon. If she had to cut anybody open, an extra pair of trained eyes would be worth their weight in palladium. A movement at the cargo bay door caught her eye. Minseok was racing along the gangway. He exchanged hurried words with Kyungsoo at the door. Kyungsoo ran back to Jean.

“It’s Jongin,” he said, and she saw that Chanyeol was coming behind MInseok, with Jongin slung over his shoulders. He made straight for the med bay while Minseok set the closure sequence for the cargo bay doors. Chanyeol turned in the doorway and set Jongin down gently on the side of the bed. He seemed fine, a little dazed. She couldn’t work out where he was hurt until Jean walked around to his other side and saw that his left arm was covered in blood.

“I didn’t even realise he had left with you,” Jean said to Chanyeol, inspecting the wound that she saw in Jongin’s upper arm.

“He came in after. Surprised the rearguard. Saved my life, probably.” Chanyeol turned to Yixing. “It’s just a surface wound, isn’t it?”

“It looks like it,” Yixing said, moving his hands in a way that told Jean that he was zooming in on Jongin’s arm. Jean turned Jongin gently; whoever this other crew member was, the others clearly trusted his word. She would trust him too. “Jean,” Yixing said to her, “can you try to prise off his shirt from around the wound? I can’t see it clearly but it’s a graze, right?”

“Yeah, I think so. There’s a lot of blood but too much to be deep muscle damage.” That was a relief. She could stitch up a surface wound easily enough.

“Good instincts,” Yixing said. In that authoritative voice of his it was like being complimented by a teacher. Jean tried not to feel too pleased with herself. This was literally her job.

She turned her attention to Jongin who looked a bit worried but not overly concerned. Shock, she realised. She called to Kyungsoo to stand with him while she fetched some anesthetic; knocking him out now might save him from panic later on when she was dressing the wound. He looked up at her with mild curiosity as she tapped the needle.

“Did Yixing say this was okay?” he asked.

“It’s okay,” Yixing called from the transponder, and Jongin nodded vaguely. Jean administered the anesthetic and a couple of seconds later he drifted backwards. Kyungsoo helped him lie flat. Then, Jean set to work on dressing his arm.

Chapter Text

The crew left Jean with the unconscious Jongin eventually. They hung around longer than she thought was strictly necessary, like they were making sure she was going to do a good job. Baekhyun had already uncoupled them from the other ship by the time Jongin had even reached the med bay, and eventually Minseok called the others to a conference upstairs. Kyungsoo took the transponder with him, so even Yixing - the mysterious other crew member - was gone. Once his arm was stitched up, Jean gave Jongin a once-over to check that there were no other injuries, set him up on a saline drip, and left him to sleep it off. She climbed the stairs to the crew quarters and stood at the bottom of the stairs to the galley for a few minutes, straining to hear any voices over the hum of the ship. There was nothing. She thought about joining the crew for the debrief and then thought better of it. She hadn’t been invited; it wasn’t her place. She wasn’t one of them, she was just a passenger. Just as she took her foot off the stairs, Sehun appeared at the top.

“There you are,” he said, waving her up with an eyeroll that suggested that she was looked-for. “Come on.”

“Jongin’s asleep,” she said, assuming he wanted a status report, but Sehun just waved her down the hallway to a door near the access hatch for the bridge. This was a room she hadn’t been in yet. She had assumed it was some sort of maintenance room. As she approached, Minseok stuck his head out the door.

“Ah,” he said. “Here you are. Come on in,” he ushered her in. Sehun followed her inside, leaning against the wall and inspecting his nails. He had the manner of someone who was constantly inconvenienced. Jean was starting to realise that his designation as ‘Captain’ was something of a rotational thing. If the ship had a captain, he wasn’t here, and the others were sharing responsibilities. Sehun’s responsibility, it seemed, was to pose as the captain without having to fulfill any of the duties of actually being one.

Everyone except for Baekhyun and Jongin were arrayed around the dark room, and in the centre was a full-size hologram of Yixing. In life-size, he wasn’t much taller than Jean was, but he was - she noticed with a blush she hoped no one could see in the gloom - strikingly handsome, now that she could actually see his features.

“We don’t want to pry, but something has… come up,” Minseok said, carefully. “We need to know who we have on our ship.”

Jean looked around the room. She was surrounded. What did they want to know? Chanyeol stepped forward, a sympathetic look on his face.

“Don’t worry,” he said. “We don’t need to know everything, but the ship we were just-”

“Hey,” Kyungsoo warned quietly. “She doesn’t need to know everything.”

“She needs to know something,” Chanyeol answered, reasonably. Kyungsoo looked worried but gave him a short nod. Chanyeol looked at Minseok, who just shrugged. That seemed to be all the permission he needed to keep going.

“The ship we just boarded sent out a distress signal. It was… a familiar signal, something we would recognise and trust. Do you understand?”

Jean didn’t, really, but she just nodded anyway. She was still panicked about having to reveal anything to these people. Chanyeol went on.

“The ship was in distress, but it was a trap. Half of the crew were dead but there were still Force soldiers on board. That’s who shot Jongin.”

“Force…” Jean muttered involuntarily, a shiver of fear running down her spine. Tanks of unformed things flashed in her memory. Screams from a laboratory she was never allowed to enter. An explosion and a hallway with a flickering light and headless bodies on the floor, bloated like they’d been submerged in water. Some were blown apart. A handprint burned into an access panel.

So much blood in an empty elevator that she wondered how anyone could have survived long enough to escape. “Red Force?” she managed finally.

“They control this sector,” Kyungsoo said, almost defiantly. There was fear in his voice.

“I know,” Jean said.

“We…” Minseok looked uncomfortable. “We need to be sure, Jean.”

“Be sure of what?”

“That you’re not the one who signalled them first. That they didn’t broadcast a distress signal in a code only we would understand because somebody told them The Eve was in the area.” Yixing spoke up for the first time. She looked to him and saw only open enquiry in his face. No suspicion there. That was a relief, for some reason. She shook her head, vigorously, almost involuntarily.

“It wasn’t me,” she said. “It couldn’t be me.”

“Why?” Sehun asked from behind her. A slight breeze blew through the room, a draught from a doorway or vent she couldn’t see, maybe.

“Because,” she turned, facing him. The breeze ruffled her hair, blowing it back around her shoulders, exposing for anybody close enough to see the incision in her temple where she had cut out the incendiary device that would have killed her at the command of others. “Because Red Force is who I’m running from.”

Chapter Text

The shock in the room was palpable. Nobody spoke for a few seconds and then everybody spoke at once.

“Why are you running?”

“What do you mean?”

“You’re running?”

Baekhyun chose that moment to join them. He looked around once, made eye contact with Jean, then yelled so loud that everybody shut up.

“What’s going on?” he asked. Yixing answered him. He was the only one who hadn’t fired a tirade of questions at Jean.

“Jean just told us that she’s also on the run from Red Force,” he said. Also?

“What did she do?” Baekhyun asked, then turned to Jean. He was blocking the doorway. “What did you do?”

Jean bit her lip. She didn’t know these men. She didn’t trust them… yet. She thought that she might be able to trust them, though. There was something honest about them. There was an earnestness to them, an openness in their manner that told her she wasn’t seeing a staged version. This was who they were. She made eye contact with Yixing and he gave her a small smile.

That made her feel brave.

“I don’t know what you’re all running from,” she said, glancing around at the others, “but for now please trust me: I’m not working for Red Force. But… I used to. I couldn’t do it anymore. I know that’s not an answer, but know that I want to be as far away from them as I can get. I need to get past their control.” She couldn’t tell them the truth. She was still trying to resolve that with herself. What she had been part of, who she had been before she joined this crew, the things she had done for Red Force… she wasn’t ready to admit all of that to herself yet. She must have looked panicked because Kyungsoo stepped forward and put his hand on her shoulder. It was a friendly gesture, but his expression was so worried she could take no comfort in it. Who were these men? Had she made a mistake getting passage with them?

“You left Red Force?” he asked. The others were silent. The atmosphere was tense.

“I escaped Red Force,” Jean corrected him. “Nobody just leaves.” She looked around the room and saw them nodding. “You… did you work for Red Force too?”

“No,” Chanyeol said quickly, as both Baekhyun and Sehun scoffed behind her. “No, but we know what you mean.” The tension drained out of the room. Kyungsoo squeezed her arm and let go.

“We’re done here. Let’s go get some dinner,” he announced to the others, and made for the door.

“Wait,” Yixing called. “Jean, can you stay?”

The others shrugged and walked out of the room. Jean looked around as they left, taking in the space for the first time. It was a transponder room, she realised. A transmitter was embedded in the floor, and another two were in the walls, beaming Yixing’s image into the centre of the room. There had been a transponder room at the lab. They were very expensive. What was this ship?

“Where did you get this ship?” she blurted out, as Baekhyun shut the door softly behind him.

“Spoils of war,” Yixing said. Jean turned to face him. With just the two of them in the room there was nowhere to hide. His gaze was very direct.

“What did you want?” she asked, when he didn’t say anything. Yixing was looking her over.

“Come here,” he said, and she stepped towards him. “And push back your hair.”

That was it, then. He knew where to look for proof. She pulled back her hair from her temple and turned to the side. His hologram was next to her now. The light density was so acute that there was barely any translucency. It was like he was standing next to her, so close she should have been able to feel the brush of his shirt on her arm. His hair, curled at the ends, dipped into her vision. If he had really been here it would have tickled her nose. She felt nothing but her heart started to race anyway. It was the most peculiar sensation.

“Are you a doctor?” she asked him again. He hadn’t actually answered her the first time. Yixing inspected her temple then stepped back.

“I- not exactly,” he said. “But I know medicine. And anatomy. And I know that’s a scar from where you cut out the incendiary device.”

“You’ve seen them before?” she asked, covering her temple with her hair again. Yixing seemed to be struggling for words. He looked off towards something she couldn’t see.

“I’ve seen them before,” he agreed quietly, and she didn’t push him. She recognised that reluctance. It wasn’t that he didn’t want to tell her, it’s that he didn’t know how. That was how she felt.

She wanted to ask him where he was, why he wasn’t on the ship, but she didn’t think he would answer that directly, either.

“You should go and eat something,” he said to her suddenly.

“I should check on Jongin first,” she said. “He should be awake soon.” She turned towards the door, then turned back. “Do you need me to, um, switch you off?”

Yixing grinned at her. “I can do that,” he said. “Goodbye Jean.”

“Goodbye.”

Chapter Text

“We’re making a stop at Fortuna Station,” said a deep voice from the doorway. Jean jumped. She had been clearing out a cabinet of old dressings and empty boxes, and she over balanced, falling backwards. Chanyeol’s big, concerned eyes appeared above her.

“Are you okay?” he asked. Jean bit back what she was going to say - that she would be better if people didn’t keep sneaking up on her - and took his outstretched hand, climbing gingerly to her feet. This had happened a few times now. She would be in a room or a hallway and suddenly a crew member would appear from behind a door or swing down from the gantry above into her path, causing her to jump. They all moved with this kind of weird, preternatural balance. Some were worse than others. Jongin in particular would turn up beside her in the galley when she was facing the door and swore she hadn’t seen anybody enter. It was vaguely disquieting how easily they could all sneak up on her. She recalled what Chanyeol had said.

“You’re stopping at Fortuna?” Jean felt a touch of uneasiness. They were still a week out at standard cruising speed from Corwen. How many more stops were they going to make? Each deceleration added a day or so onto their journey, and acceleration back to speed took another day. Not for the first time she suspected that these men didn’t actually have anywhere specific to be. Neither did she, but the longer they lingered in Force Space, the more likely it was that she would be caught and eliminated. Or dragged back to the- no. She wouldn’t think about that.

She would rather be killed than go back there.

“Kyungsoo wants some supplies. And Jongin needs parts. And Sehunnie and I want to see the station. Do you want to come with us?” he said, grinning so broadly it was impossible not to smile back at him. Jean shrugged.

“I don’t think I need anything…” she trailed off. She didn’t. The med bay was well-stocked. But she had also never really been anywhere. What would a station like Fortuna be like? “Have you been there before?” she asked Chanyeol, who hopped up onto the examination bed and swung his long legs beneath him. He shook his head.

“I’ve heard about it, but we’ve never stopped there before. It’s busy so… yeah, we’ve never stopped there. But Jongin said there’s some inertia... something... thing they’ll sell at the market there. He needs it for the stabilizers.” The way he said this told Jean that Chanyeol knew nothing about the engine of the ship. Neither did she, so none of this meant anything to her anyway.

He went on. “And Junmyeon said it was safe. In case you were worried. It’s not Force-controlled. At least he didn’t think so.”

Junmyeon. One of the absentee crew members, Jean had gleaned from the others in the two weeks since she had told them she was on the run. They hadn’t told her anything of substance, exactly, but two names came up frequently over mealtimes and she had eventually caved and asked about them. Junmyeon was the actual captain of The Eve, away from the ship on business that wasn’t hers. She had heard his voice once transmit a message to the ship over the beam when she was in the cockpit. Junmyeon had a nice voice that had a musical lilt to it. But he also spoke with certainty and authority, and Jean could see why he was captain.

Jongdae was another crew member. Unlike Junmyeon, he wasn’t in frequent contact over the beam-channels so Jean thought he must be doing something covert. Minseok and Kyungsoo talked about Jongdae a lot, and clearly missed him. She got the impression that Jongdae was something of a reliable confidante.

They all talked about Yixing, too. He had clearly been away from the crew for some time, but they used the transponder room like another lounge. There was frequently somebody in there, chatting to Yixing about goings-on in the ship. Jean had walked by the open door one day to find Sehun in there trying to divest Yixing of the combination to his cabin which was down on the other crew accommodation level beneath hers. What he wanted the code for, Sehun never said. Yixing teased him for a few minutes but refused to give it up. He had seen Jean in the doorway then and raised his hand and she had walked away quickly, face burning. She told herself she was just embarrassed at being caught eavesdropping.

Sehun spent much of his time moping about the ship lamenting the lack of a full crew complement, but more than any other crew member on the ship or off, he talked constantly about Junmyeon. Junmyeon’s absence was clearly a great inconvenience and discomfort to Sehun, and he talked about him like a parent, though when she asked Minseok he had told her that Junmyeon was only a few years older than Sehun. Jean was also starting to wonder if the delegation of the title of captain to Sehun wasn’t more of a joke that Sehun was just running with rather than a sincere handover of command.

Chanyeol was still talking about Fortuna.

“There’s supposed to be a recreation dome near the top of the original structure, set into the side of the asteroid,” he was saying.

“Fortuna is an asteroid?” Jean frowned. She had assumed it was a station in orbit, like… like the one she had escaped from.

“Fortuna is a planet,” Chanyeol clarified. “It’s not habitable, but it is terrestrial and there’s a strong gravitational pull.” She had heard this tone of voice from him before. Chanyeol loved talking about the different planets in the systems. He gave the crew regular updates on interesting features they might see out the viewports on decelerations, and liked to sit up in the cockpit with Baekhyun and watch their trajectories. “Fortuna Station,” he was saying, “is a tethered asteroid, locked in geostationary orbit between the planet at its star, Organa Alpha,” he held up his hands, demonstrating geostationary orbit like Jean wouldn’t know what he was talking about. Like she hadn’t been born in one of the generation ships like everybody else in Force Controlled space.

She smiled at him anyway; it was nice to listen to him talk. “So the station was built into the asteroid, right through the core and out the other side. There’s a recreation dome on the original surface, though, and Junmyeon said he heard people playing music up there.” His big eyes were sparkling when he said this. Music. That was another thing about this crew. They all talked about music all of the time. Kyungsoo hummed while he cooked. Jongin and Sehun danced in the galley most nights. Chanyeol sat in his escape pod lounge and blasted music out of speakers, sometimes adding his own parts with his guitar. Baekhyun frequently abused the ship-wide tannoy to serenade the rest of the crew. Nobody minded; his voice was beautiful.

Chanyeol hopped off the bed and made for the door. “We’re six hours out, if you want to come with us,” he said. Now that he mentioned it, Jean noticed the deceleration burn, a very tiny but just-noticeable drag in their internal gravity.

“I’ll think about it,” she said. “But… maybe. That sounds nice.”

Chanyeol flashed her a toothy grin and then left.

Chapter Text

Fortuna Station was the biggest station Jean had ever been on. The docking level alone had more berths than she could count, and she did try as she waited on the gantry. Baekhyun, vibrating with excitement about being off the ship, waited with her for Sehun to pay the dockmaster and for Chanyeol, Kyungsoo and Jongin to join them. Minseok waited with them but he was going to stay behind.

“Come on, hyung, no one will hurt the ship. Let’s go get a drink,” Baekhyun nudged Minseok’s shoulder. Minseok made a face at the word ‘drink’ and looked for a second like he might change his mind.

“No,” he sighed. “Someone should stay here in case- well, in case.”

They were always like this, talking in half-sentences. Baekhyun groaned loudly, anyway.

“Pick me up something,” Minseok said to Baekhyun, hopefully.

“Not if you don’t come with us,” Baekhyun shot back. Minseok turned to Kyungsoo, who had just joined them.

“Pick me up some beer at the market,” he said, and Kyungsoo nodded, keying the new item into his datapad.

“Hey!” Baekhyun was indignant, but he just gave Minseok a playful nudge with his fist and grinned. Chanyeol and Jongin arrived just as Sehun came back from the dockmaster’s office. His face looked like thunder.

“What’s wrong?” Jean asked.

“He made me pay the full charge,” Sehun huffed.

“So?”

Sehun eyed her and looked like he was about to say something scathing, when Chanyeol slung his arm around his shoulder and turned them towards the tram station.

“Let’s go see what’s happening upstairs,” he said, and Sehun sighed heavily again before nodding. Jean glanced at Minseok, who shrugged.

“Have fun,” he said and gave them a wave before climbing the gantry back to the open cargo-bay door.

“Come on,” Kyungsoo said. “Don’t mind Sehunnie, he’s just entitled.”

Jean eyed the broad shouldered interim-captain ahead of her as Chanyeol talked him back around to good spirits. “Entitled to what?”

“Everything,” Baekhyun chimed in. “Our Sehunnie takes being the youngest very seriously.”

Kyungsoo and Jongin left them on the market level, heading off in search of food and ship parts. Baekhyun stuck with Sehun and Chanyeol, and they were talking about finding the recreation dome first then going to a bar. Sehun wanted to shop, and was trying to suggest collecting the others in the markets before the bar, and at some point Jean lost interest in following them all around. It was exhausting trying to keep up with Baekhyun’s chaotic conversation tangents, and Sehun and Chanyeol’s long legs. She tapped Baekhyun on the elbow.

“I’m going to explore,” she said. “I’ll come find you in a few hours, okay?”

“Are you okay?” Baekhyun asked. He gave her a once over like she might have broken a limb. He had such open expressions, such genuine concern, it was impossible not to find him endearing.

“I’m fine,” she reassured him. “I have my datapad, just let me know where you are.” Baekhyun gave her a measured look, then nodded and grinned, and then caught up with others, leaving Jean alone. Well, not quite alone. She was in a broad, sloping corridor, with hundreds of people streaming around her.

This was the fifth deck, and the corridor was just the outside lane of a much wider thoroughfare. The trams ran through the centre, and on the other side of the tracks, Jean could see freight and goods moving on mech-carts. Fortuna had the atmosphere of a place that never stopped. It was overwhelming after weeks in the confines in the ship with just the six crew. She moved to the side and let people move past her as she thought about where she might go.

She had left the others on their climb to the top of the station. The markets were on the third level, behind her. The sixth and seventh levels above, under the surface of the asteroid, were open spaces for recreation and socialising. She didn’t really want to go up there yet since she assumed she would end up there with the crew later on.

Jean pulled out her datapad and was trying to decide where to go, when a tap on her elbow startled her into looking up. There was no one. Well, there were hundreds of people, but no one who could have got close enough. Her heart started to beat faster.

No one here could recognise her, could they? Fortuna was right on the edge of Force Controlled space, and Chanyeol had told her that there was no sign of Force actually here. They had assurances. She didn’t know anybody else, apart from the crew. The crew… she had taken passage with a few different crews since escaping Red Force but no one who would have got close enough to her to recognise her weeks or months later. But there were people at the base… she shook herself. There were exactly two people at the base who would have known her well enough to spot her now, changed as she was with her hair short and out of the base uniforms. And neither of those people could be here because both of them had died on their flight out. Jean felt her eyes start to fill up and blinked back the tears. She wouldn’t think about Laer and Sama right now. She looked back at her datapad and chose a direction; the markets. She turned back down the slope.

The walk down into the market was different from the walk up, and the scale of the market level, stretching far into the distance, took Jean’s breath away. The stalls and tents and long halls were arrayed out in front of her to either side of the walkway, a dizzying mix of colours and smells and noises from every direction. She almost stopped on the walkway to look at it, but the press of people behind and in front of her meant that she had to keep going, and that momentum almost took her right into the observation range of a Red Force Sentinel.

If the Sentinel hadn’t been so big, she might have missed it, but it towered over the crowd at the base of an access stairs, and Jean saw it just in time to stop before she came within its range.

She ducked under a tarp, into the back alley between two lines of stalls, and breathed heavily.

Red Force.

The Sentinel cemented her certainty that there was no actual Red Force presence on the station, because they were only deployed as a replacement for soldiers, not a compliment. Because who needed humans - flawed, indecisive, unreliable humans - when you had a machine that could take out a whole squadron of rebels in one devastating beam of its laser cannon?

There wasn’t anyone here who would recognise her, but if a Sentinel caught her in its sensors, it would recognise her biometrics, and then it wouldn’t matter how much she had changed.

Nothing would fool that thing. She took a deep breath, forcing herself to ignore the rising panic.

“It didn’t see me,” she whispered to herself, putting her hands on her knees. “It didn’t see me.”

“It nearly did,” said a voice behind her and she almost tumbled over as she swung around.

There was a man at the entrance to the alley, backlit from outside. He was all in black, with a mask covering the lower half of his face. The peak of his hat was pulled low, and his hood hid his features in shadow.

“It almost saw you,” he said, moving towards her. Jean stepped back. Who was this? Was it that obvious that she was hiding from the Sentinel? Who-?

The man pulled down his mask and yanked back his hood and, for the first time, Jean saw Yixing in person. It was really him, not a hologram, standing right in front of her, so close she could almost touch him. She nearly reached out and did that, glancing at the floor on reflex to check for a transponder.

“Hi Jean,” he said with a small smile.

Chapter Text

“Sorry I startled you. I wanted to say hello when we were upstairs but I didn’t want the rest of the crew to see me.”

Jean’s mouth dropped open. Yixing gave her a small half-smile that lifted the corners of his mouth, raising little dimples on each side. It was a satisfied smile that seemed to punctuate what he said. There was warmth in it. For such a small gesture, it was doing a lot. Jean realised she was staring and looked away. Then she remembered the tap on her arm and recovered her composure. That had been him.

“Why… I don’t understand. Why didn’t you say hello when I was with the others? We could have caught up to them. They’ll be so hap-”

“They can’t know I’m here,” Yixing interrupted her, suddenly serious. He approached with his hands out, like she might be worried he was armed. She gave him a once-over; he was armed, and obviously so. He was showing her he didn’t mean harm, then. That he wasn’t intending to use the pulse gun strapped into a holster at his waist on her. He wore his short hooded jacket open with a vest underneath; he definitely wasn’t trying to hide the fact that he could defend himself. Weapons were forbidden by authorities on Fortuna, though people still carried them down here, albeit out of sight. He clearly didn’t care, which meant he was good at keeping off the grid. But-

“Why?” she asked. “Why do you have to hide from the crew?”

Yixing looked at his shoes. At her shoes. They were standing kind of close together now, and Jean tried to take a step back but her foot met the canvas of the next stall.

“It wouldn’t be safe for them to know where I was. Or for us to be together,” he said quietly. His tone spoke volumes; sadness, regret, anger, loss. Then he met her eyes and even though he was a little taller than her, he still seemed to look up at her through his long lashes. She couldn’t help it; she felt her face heat up. What was wrong with her?

“Why?” she asked, a little breathlessly. Then she cleared her throat and asked again. She would never even dream of asking one of the crew for answers like this, but something about Yixing made her want to know more. Know everything if he would just tell her. He gave her that half smile again, and didn’t answer like she knew he probably wouldn’t.

“Come on,” he said, stepping up to the canvas and drawing it back slightly. “The Sentinel is distracted, we can get past.”

Jean glanced outside. The Sentinel was indeed preoccupied. The long claw with the module that held its haptic ports was extended into a stall at the end of the row, it’s sensor array facing into the stall and away from the street. Whoever the poor bastard was who owned that stall must be hoping for a catastrophic decompression right about now. In a place like the markets at Fortuna, everything was fair game for merchandise and not all of it was above board. If that Sentinel found anything at all - for sale or not - that wasn’t sanctioned by Red Force, the owner would be killed on the spot at best. At worst, he would be taken back for questioning. And Jean had seen first hand what happened to the ‘prisoners’ of Red Force. She shuddered involuntarily and tried to take a deep, steadying breath. Yixing caught the movement.

“It’s okay,” he said. “We can make it to the other side of the alley, and cut through.” He reached down and took her hand, squeezing it slightly. “Let’s go.” Jean was about to tell him that she wasn’t sure but she was so shocked by his touch that her mouth snapped shut. Then he was pulling her across the thoroughfare and through the alley, and out into the street on the other side.

He was still holding her hand.

Jean realised that it was the first time somebody had touched her, had held her hand, since Laer. She saw enough of Laer when she shut her eyes at night, felt the shadow-touch of cold, blood-stained fingers on her cheek again when she tried to sleep, to not forget that easily. This was nothing like those last moments with Laer. Yixing’s fingers were dry, the tips lightly calloused where they pressed into the back of her hand. His hand was warm. She felt… relaxed around him. Her heart-rate was normal. She wondered at that. She couldn’t deny that she found this man distractingly attractive. So why was she so calm? Yixing squeezed her hand again.

“Are you okay?” he asked, dark eyes concerned.

“Yes,” she said and gave him a smile. It was still so strange to see him in person. Every time she looked at him she did a double take. “Thank you,” he muttered.

The second he dropped her hand, her heart started hammering in her chest. She looked around in panic, but there was nothing to be worried about now. The Sentinel wasn’t anywhere to be seen. But it might be- Yixing took her hand again and she instantly calmed. Jean put her hand to her chest and her heart rate steadied; it was the most peculiar sensation. Then she realised something. She looked up at Yixing in surprise. She wasn’t physically panicking but her mind was racing. Why couldn’t she panic? This was worth panicking over.

“What are you doing to me?” she demanded. Her voice was calm.

Was it a drug? Was it some sort of transmitter in his palm, dulling her senses? No, her senses were fine. She was just… not freaking out.

She tried for volume, since the tone wasn’t working.

“What are you doing? She tried to yank her hand from his but Yixing held it tight. Whatever he was doing stopped, though. She felt her panic rise again like hot water. He still held her hand, and pulled her into another gap between the stalls. This was a narrower gap than the last one and he was right up against her.

“Be quiet,” he said. “Please. I’m sorry. But I was afraid you would lose it about the Sentinel and I needed you to move. I’m sorry, I won’t do it again.” He held her hand between both of his. He seemed to be handing it back to her, except it was her hand and it was attached to her. She knew she should take it back. She did. She pushed it into her pocket and tried not to think about where he had touched her. He was still suspicious as fuck and she needed to focus on that and not the way his Adam’s apple bobbled nervously directly in front of her eyes.

“What did you do?” she asked. “Have you got a nerve dampener or something?”

Yixing smiled that little half-smile again and looked down at his hands. Jean looked too. There was nothing there.

“A drug?” she asked.

Yixing shook his head. “No, no drugs,” he said, and that was all. He met her eyes and she knew he wasn’t going to answer her. It made her sad for some reason. She couldn’t work out why. She remembered that he was a member of The Eve crew, even if he wasn’t on it right now.

The longer she spent around these men the stranger they seemed. She recalled Chanyeol picking up that pot without gloves. Jongin’s uncanny ability to get around the ship without passing anybody. How things blew off shelves when Sehun didn’t get his way or how Baekhyun never turned on the lights because he didn’t seem to need to. There were other things, how Minseok was never cold when she could wear three layers sometimes because the air conditioning was always on full blast, and how Kyungsoo was able to lift things he shouldn’t with his slight frame. Like shelving units or crates of food. Who were these men?

She held eye contact with Yixing, willing him to tell her more. He didn’t. He just inclined his head, bird-like, in inquiry.

“Shall we go?” he asked.

“Where?”

He shook his head from side to side. “Around,” he said, mouth quirking up in the corners. “I’ve never been to Fortuna. It would be a shame to explore alone now I found you.”

Jean considered walking away. She had her datapad with her; she could call one of the others. Why didn’t Yixing want to see them? Because it wasn’t safe, he had said. What did that even- no. Jean shook her head. She wouldn’t get answers so there was no point in asking. And she could do with the company, she reasoned. Yixing had seen the Sentinel too; he knew she was on the lookout for Red Force, and four eyes were better than two.

“Okay,” she said. “Let’s go.”

Chapter Text

The markets were massive. They occupied all of the space on this level of the station, wrapping around the central core where the access tunnels and ramps were in wide, concentric circles. They seemed to be divided into sections, and Jean had met Yixing in the section that sold goods. They quickly passed into the food market. The sounds of frying and chopping and the smells of thousands of different spices and flavours all at once made Jean forget about the Sentinel for a while, and Yixing’s uncanny abilities. All she could think about was what she wanted to eat first. Yixing, it seemed, had the same thought. He prodded her gently from one stall to the next, taking samples and cajoling her into trying things she had never seen before. She barely remembered her childhood, but the same bland canteen food for over a decade at the station had wiped any memory of most of these foods she might have had from her mind. She thought she ate well on The Eve but this place showed her that she was missing out on a whole universe of other flavours and textures. Yixing pointed out things she didn’t know the name for, and gave her sticks of things to try, handing over tokens to vendors before she could work out what she was even holding. Eventually she started feeling guilty.

“Can I buy you something?” she asked him as they made their way down an alley. Yixing seemed to be looking for something and stopped in front of a stall and nodded.

“Yes,” he said curtly. “You can buy me some of this.” Jean took in the stall. It was simpler than some of the ones around it, and seemed to only sell one dish. It was a kind of stew, with all kinds of vegetables and meat and a thin broth. Even from a few feet away, Jean could almost taste the spices. Whatever this was, it was hot.

“Okay,” she said with no small degree of uncertainty. Yixing nodded at her and ducked back to sit down at one of the bench tables on the other side of the alley. Jean approached the stall.

“Um, two of… these,” she said and looked around for the price. It wasn’t written anywhere. The steely-faced woman behind the counter glared at her. Jean met her eyes and looked instantly away. She glanced back at Yixing. He was watching her, that smile playing on his lips again. He showed absolutely no sign of standing up to help.

“How many people? Two?” the stall holder asked, impatiently.

“Yes,” Jean said.

The stall holder thrust two empty bowls into her hands, and ushered her away from the stall, back to the table where Yixing sat. Jean shuffled over and sat down, placing the bowls on the table. The woman followed behind a moment later with a huge, shallow pot of the stew and set it in the middle of the table, balancing a ladle across the top.

“Er, how much?” Jean ventured. The woman looked her up and down and then did the same to Yixing. He grinned at her and she scowled at him.

“Finish it all,” she snapped at him, “you’re too thin.” She turned back to Jean. “Four tokens,” she said. Jean counted the tokens into the woman’s hand, astonished. That was barely anything, and this bowl looked like it could feed a family of twelve. The woman bustled off and Jean sat, facing Yixing.

“Do you know her?”

“Who?”

“The stall holder.”

Yixing squinted at the little woman. “I don’t think so,” he said. He picked up his spoon. “We better finish it,” he said, with a cheeky incline of his head, “or she might charge you more.”

“It’s gigantic,” said Jean frankly.

“So we should get started,” Yixing winked at her. He didn’t seem surprised at all by what was going on and Jean felt like she was being made fun of somehow, but she went along with it. The mysterious avoidance of the crew, the strange ability to calm her down, his determination to eat this food from this taciturn stall holder out of all the others in the market - she was beginning to accept that maybe Yixing wasn’t like other people. He was downright charming where he should have been aloof and suspicious. He was solicitous when he should be superior. He was, right now, filling a bowl with stew for her.

Yixing handed the filled bowl across the table to Jean and she picked up a spoon to try it. Her instincts had been correct. It was punishingly spicy but so, so good. She finished the first bowl quickly, and after that it was relatively easy, between the two of them, to finish it all. The old woman came back so they could compliment her before they left.

Overfull, Jean almost protested when Yixing pressed a cup of cold beer into her hands a few stalls further along.

“Drink this with me,” he said, turning to face her with his own cup. “I have to go soon.”

Jean felt the smile she had been wearing since they’d entered the food market slip slowly from her face. “Why?” she blurted out quickly. It wasn’t so long ago that she had been wary of him but

Yixing was such easy company, so pleasant to be around, that she had lapsed into an easy camaraderie with him. She had momentarily forgotten that he wasn’t on the crew right now.

“When?” she asked. He shook his head and tipped his cup against hers.

“Cheers,” he said, holding her gaze for a few seconds before downing all of his beer. Jean followed suit. After the spicy stew, the cold bear was refreshing, and she drank it all. When she put the cup back on the counter her head spun slightly.

Then, a familiar voice cut through the throng around them. A bark of a laugh and a deep rumble in response, and suddenly Yixing had looped his arm around her waist and dragged her into the space between the stalls again, pulling the canvas across to hide them from view. Jean opened her mouth to ask something but he pressed his finger to her lips. Or maybe his own. It didn’t matter, there was only a finger separating them anyway. The tips of their noses almost touched. Yixing’s eyes widened and held hers.

“Quiet,” he whispered, and Jean glanced through the tiny gap in the canvas. Jongin appeared first, followed by Kyungsoo, carrying bags of food. Jongin was talking animatedly about something, and they passed as quickly as they had arrived. Yixing didn’t move. Jean didn’t either.

His arm was still around her waist. At some point when he dragged her in, Jean had grabbed his forearm and it was like her hand was holding him against her. She realised this and loosened her grip, but he didn’t release his. This close to him, he overwhelmed her senses. The tang from the beer cut through a clean, fresh scent like washed sheets, and Jean tried not to inhale too heavily.

Yixing watched through the gap for a couple of moments after Jongin and Kyungsoo had gone. Jean studied him up close because it was hard not to. His skin looked flawless from a distance but up close there were little blemishes, tiny lines where his dimples made an impression on his skin, and crinkles around his eyes. He smiles a lot, she thought. Again she wondered who he really was, and why he was - why all of them were- running from Red Force. And what was this strange power he seemed to have to keep her calm. He wasn’t doing it right now. She could almost hear her heart hammering against her chest and hoped he couldn’t hear it too.

“Yixing,” she said quietly, and he turned his attention back to her. He dropped his hand from between them, resting it on her elbow. Holding her against him. “You have to go,” she said, and he nodded. “Can… can you tell me why it’s not safe, that the others don’t know?”

“No,” he said. “But they would agree with me,” he said. “They shouldn’t have been here while I was. It was a mistake. You can tell them, but wait until they’ve left Fortuna. I’ll tell them myself, probably.”

“Will you tell them you met me here?” she asked. She didn’t want them to think she had held something back from them, but she couldn’t bring herself to lie to them either. She liked the strange crew.

“Not if you don’t want me to,” he said, but she shook her head.

“I’ll tell them,” she said. “But I need some kind of… proof? I don’t know. That you’re who you say you are? I don’t want them to think I’m misleading them about meeting you. Or for them to be worried I met someone claiming to be you. Though I don’t know how that would work.” She had only been thinking aloud but on that last point, Yixing’s eyes widened.

“You’re right,” he said. Yixing thought for a second. “Do you have your datapad?” he asked, and she dug it out of her pocket, handing it over. Yixing finally let go of her to take it. On the screen of the datapad, he opened her notes and drew a shape with his index finger. Through the glass, Jean could see it was some kind of stylistic rendering of an animal. And a number. 10?

“What’s this?” she asked, when he handed it back.

“My sign,” he said. “Show them this and they’ll know it’s me.” Jean looked down at the drawing. It was an animal. A unicorn. “I have to go,” Yixing said, and put his hands on her shoulders. Jean looked up at him, so close she could see the way his pupils contracted when his eyes fixed on her. “Let’s talk soon,” he said. “Okay?”

“Okay,” Jean said, and barely had any time to register that he had pressed his lips briefly to her forehead before he ducked out through the canvas and was gone.

Chapter Text

“Yixing? Our Yixing?” Minseok frowned at Jean across the table in the galley, clearly confused.

“Yes, ou- your Yixing,” Jean sighed. Some variation of this question had punctuated every sentence she spoke as she told them about what happened on Fortuna. A day and a half behind them now, Jean assumed it was probably safe to tell them. She passed her datapad across the table to Minseok, open on the drawing Yixing had done. Jean had looked at it for hours after he left, but she couldn’t work out what it could be. That is, until she was helping Kyungsoo set up for dinner and caught a glimpse of his forearm when he rolled up his sleeve to wash vegetables. There, too small to be actually decorative but large enough to see clearly, was a tattoo. The tattoo seemed to be some kind of bird, but it was in the same geometric style as Yixing’s unicorn.

“What is that symbol?” she asked Minseok now. The others crowded in to look over Minseok’s shoulder.

“His sign,” Jongin muttered, and Kyungsoo nudged him gently. Jongin looked up in confusion, saw Jean, and reddened slightly. Jean felt a stab of irritation; she was being shut out again. Baekhyun walked back into the galley.

“Yixing’s in the transponder room now,” he motioned over his shoulder. The crew started to file out. Jean didn’t move; this was probably one of those things that was crew only. Baekhyun was the last to leave and gave her a tight smile before he left her alone.

They were shocked, she could tell. There was more than a little hurt in their expressions too, but whether it was directed at her or Yixing or both, she couldn’t tell. She had kept her word to him, but she hated lying to the crew. When she had found them again on Fortuna after Yixing left, when they had asked her if she had seen anything interesting, she had just talked about the markets. Would they ever trust her now? Could they, after she had lied to them about meeting Yixing - their friend? Chanyeol’s eyes had been huge, Sehun had gaped at her in disbelief, Jongin-

Jean shook herself. It didn’t matter if they trusted her or not. She wouldn’t allow herself to feel bad about this. She was leaving soon, and then it would be like she was never here. They could keep all their secrets, too.

For two days, she had been looking for more signs of what she had witnessed before. The strange powers they all seemed to have, like Yixing’s ability to calm her down. The only thing of note to her had been finding Jongin already in the galley when she arrived this evening, though she had heard him singing to himself when she left the med bay and he hadn’t passed her on the stairs. That was it, though… the uncanniness of the whole thing. That was what unsettled her. Nobody else seemed to notice these small things, or be surprised by them. She had started keeping a little list on her datapad and then deleted it, because whatever the reason for their secrecy and whatever the reason for Yixing avoiding them on Fortuna, one thing was for sure: they were running from something. And so was she. She was starting to think that maybe they were both running from the same enemy, and if Red Force captured her, they would find the datapad and see who she had been with. Because she also had a theory now. It was a wild theory, based on nothing more than half-remembered whispers and stories of locked rooms back on the station. It wasn’t a hopeful theory, and if she was right… well, she was better off leaving this ship as soon as possible.

A tap on the door made her look up. It was Baekhyun, back again.

“Yixing wants to say hello,” he said, and gave her a little smile that gave her some confidence. Whatever Yixing had told them, that smile gave her hope that he had confirmed her story and maybe it had given them some peace of mind. She followed Baekhyun to the transponder room. They were all arrayed about the edges, with Yixing in the centre. Now that she had met him in person, she felt like the projection of him didn’t do him justice at all. He smiled broadly when he saw her but kept talking. Everybody else was listening to him.

“-when it fires. A reflective tool works on it, the same as the lasers from the sentries, so if you can find something that absorbs energy then we could project it back-”

“Yixing, that’s enough. You can transmit your report later,” Minseok said, catching sight of Jean in the doorway.

“She was with me at the market, she saw the Sentinel too,” Yixing said, a tinge of impatience in his voice. But he stopped talking anyway. Jean felt instantly awkward again and something in her snapped. Some small, fragile piece of the ego she had started to build since she left the station. She was sick of this.

“I’ve never asked to be part of whatever it is you’re doing or… are,” she said bluntly. “I don’t mind being cut out, but I don’t like to be talked around like that.”

“I’m sorry,” Minseok said, eyes pleading like he really was. “We just don’t want to endanger you too.”

“Endanger me?” Jean was taken aback. She had assumed that all their secrecy was about keeping themselves safe from her. “You-” she remembered her theory and took in the room. She counted seven of them, including Yixing. That wasn’t right. Her theory must be wrong. Chanyeol stepped forward and put his hand on her shoulder.

“Don’t worry, we won’t put you in danger,” he reassured her, mistaking her confusion for fear. “We- none of us want you to get hurt, and we know you’ve got your own reasons for wanting to stay away from Red Force.” The others nodded around her. None of them looked angry. Would they be angry if they knew what she suspected? Or frightened? Which was worse? She didn’t know. She looked at Yixing, at his open, hopeful expression. At the way he was smiling at her like seeing her had made his day. She had to be honest with herself; seeing him had kind of made hers.

But what if she was right? Would they be as concerned for her safety if they knew that she knew who they were? Could she tell them what she suspected that they were seven of the Powers?

That she knew their capture and destruction was Red Force sole focus? That they were who Red Force had been hunting for all her life, and that she had once been part of that hunt, though she had never really thought about who the Powers actually were. And if they were the Powers, if she was right… did she tell them about the Paradise Project?

Jean made a decision and damn the consequences. She was sick of the secrets.

“I don’t want to know what’s going on,” she said, meaningfully, to the room at large. Whatever it is that you- are involved with, just please leave me out of it.”

Chapter Text

They would be in Corwen in four days. Baekhyun stopped by to tell her that, and Jean nodded curtly at him, and he left after some seconds of hesitation at the door. It had been a week since Fortuna, and Jean had put some distance between her and the crew since then. She had been taking her meals at odd times rather than joining them and hiding out in the med bay during the day. They had definitely noticed. Kyungsoo had come in asking her to stitch up a cut in one of his fingers that could easily have been covered with a bandage from the kitchen first aid kit.

Minseok had come down to ask her about a suspected inflamed tendon in his ankle that Jean in turn suspected as being entirely made-up. Even Sehun had turned up one morning complaining of a toothache and refused to leave until she had looked at his tooth even though she told him again and again that she wasn’t a dentist. Jean was starting to think that maybe they felt bad about keeping her in the dark, that maybe they had been ready to tell her something. Were they now feeling rejected because she wasn’t interested in getting involved? She liked them all, but things had become too complicated. When she told them that she didn’t want to know what was going on, they had honoured her request and after she left the transponder room that day, she hadn’t been asked back. That shouldn’t bother her, but it did. It was her own doing, after all.

A soft knock on the door made her look up from where she was trying to reconfigure the diagnosis table; if the ship was going to be without a medic after Corwen, then they should at least have a working diagnosis table. This one was a relic. Jongin was standing in the doorway, watching her work.

“I can help with that,” he said, nodding towards the table.

“The problem’s not mechanical,” Jean said. “Did you want something?”

A small frown cut a line through the smooth skin of Jongin’s forehead. He wasn’t comfortable with her change in tone. The others could hide it, but Jongin wore his big heart on his artfully rolled-up sleeves. Jean’s resolve shook a little; she didn’t need to be unfriendly. She gave Jongin a small smile, and he returned it. He held up an object; it took Jean a couple of seconds to recognise the transponder box.

“Yixing asked me to bring this down here,” he said.

“Is he-” Jean scrambled about for a word, “here right now?”

“No,” Jongin walked over to one of the empty work surfaces and set down the box. He turned it so that the control panel faced Jean. “He said we should leave this here in case you need help, though.”

Jongin walked out, giving Jean a small, sad wave. She turned back to the diagnosis table but couldn’t focus on her work. She kept looking up at the transponder box. That’s why she was looking at it when the light beside the control panel started to flash orange.

“Shit,” she muttered, walking over to the box. She had never seen a model like this one; it wasn’t like the ones they had used back at the Red Force station. It looked homemade. What was that light for? Jean jabbed at the light, but it was fixed. Not a button, then. She saw a switch under the control panel, a little silver thing that clicked in a pleasing way when she flicked it up. The holographic panel on the surface flared to life, and then Yixing was there in miniature, looking up at her.

“Hello Jean,” he said.

“Oh. Hi.” Jean stumbled back and sat heavily on the bed behind her. “What can I do for you?”

“Very formal,” Yixing tutted at her with a smile and wagged his finger in a mock admonishment. “I haven’t seen you in a few days. I wanted to check that you were okay, after last week.”

“I’m okay,” Jean said, worrying her lip a little then stopping self-consciously when she remembered Yixing could see her. Yixing gave her a long look, then sat down on the floor of wherever he was. “Where are you?” Jean asked.

“On a station,” Yixing said, but didn’t elaborate.

“Is it- are you safe?” Jean couldn’t stop the worry she was feeling from leaking into her tone. She had been concerned about him since leaving him in Fortuna. She couldn’t really explain why he worried her, why his situation concerned her almost as much as her own. They had only met in person that one time but there was something about Yixing, something that made her want to see him again. She had never felt like that about anybody before. Like they were more than just a necessity, a hinderance, or a help. Even so, she knew the rest of the crew far better, had spent far more time with them. But Yixing… what was it about Yixing? They were running from the same enemy, she supposed. She knew what Red Force were capable of. And she had her suspicions that Yixing might know as well as she did. Not for the first time in the last week, she made a silent wish to the cosmos that she wasn’t correct in her guess. That they weren’t the Powers that Red Force were so fixed on finding.

Yixing was looking around himself, at wherever he was sitting. “I’m safe in here,” he said eventually. “The people who live here won’t be back until next week.”

Jean gaped at him.

“You broke into an apartment?” She couldn’t hide the envy in her voice. Apartments on space stations were the stuff of legend, even to someone as sheltered and cut off as Jean had been. The people who could afford to live on stations were rich. Allied-to-Red-Force rich. She wondered what the view from Yixing side was like. “Is it nice?” she asked, lamely.

“It’s alright,” Yixing said, nodding his approval as he took in his unseen surroundings. “There’s a good couch.”

Jean frowned. “Then why are you sitting on the floor?” she asked.

Yixing chuckled. “Because if I sit on it, you won’t see the couch, you’ll just see me crouched in mid-air.” He stood up and demonstrated (or sat down on the couch), then re-seated himself on the floor. “See?” Jean couldn’t help but laugh; he looked ridiculous.

“How about you?” he asked, “Tell me what you’ve been doing.” and Jean relaxed a little. He seemed genuinely interested. At the back of her mind, she had worried that the crew had stopped trusting her, had stopped liking her; that her request to stay out of their affairs had been taken as a hostile act and not her own attempt at self-preservation.

“I’m worried about getting off Corwen,” she told him honestly, and he nodded in understanding. She hadn’t talked to anyone meaningfully in a week and this was something that was starting to weigh on her a little, now she had just days left. “I’m worried I won’t be able to find a ship like this one, where I feel safe.”

Yixing’s expression was open, understanding, and invited her to open up more. Just like that day on Fortuna, she felt like she could let her guard down with him. She felt that uncanny sense of safety with him. Like she could talk to him. So she did.

After that first conversation, Yixing told her he would call regularly, and he did; once that night and twice the next morning. Jean had no idea how to contact him, but she gleaned from Minseok over dinner the following evening (a meal that Yixing had urged her to join the crew for, sensing her hesitation and increasing isolation) that Yixing and the other absentee crew members were always the ones who made contact with The Eve, and not the other way around. Minseok told her that the others weren’t free to give out their transponder codes or communicate on a datapad that was traceable to them. Jean understood. Her own datapad was sourced through the black market and was keyed to the identity of a dead woman back at Praxis 5 Station. She had never given her transponder code to anybody else, either.

After dinner, she walked back down to the med bay, but she had nothing to do. She was leaving in two days and the whole place was set up to run in her absence. She was shutting down the equipment, thinking about going to bed, when the transponder lit up again. She flicked the switch.

“Are you still in the med bay?” Yixing asked.

“Mhmmm,” Jean said, finishing off her tasks. “Why?”

“I thought you might have gone to bed,” Yixing said. He ran his hand through his hair. He looked stressed. It was enough for Jean to stop what she was doing and crouch down in front of the transponder.

“What is it?” she asked him.

“I have to leave here soon. I wanted to talk to you before I left.”

“What about?” Jean felt a little thrill of panic. Was he safe? Was he made? “Is everything alright?” Yixing shook his head and gave her a soft smile.

“Everything is fine,” he said. “I just wanted to talk to you. Just in case I didn’t get to, before you left at Corwen.”

“Oh…” Jean’s heart beat a little faster. The truth was she had been starting to worry about that. That she wouldn’t see him again. “I, er, was about to go to my room. I thought I might go to bed early.”

“I see,” Yixing nodded. Then- “Take me with you?”

“What?” Jean felt the colour rush to her face. Then she remembered that he wasn’t actually here. That he couldn’t really make out the surroundings of the space she was in anyway because that wasn’t how transponders worked. He just wanted to talk to her. “Oh, um, I guess I can,” she said, and picked up the transponder. Yixing did a little comedy move, like he was about to fall over, and Jean snorted a laugh that was louder than the move warranted but when he did things like that, cute things to make her smile, she couldn’t help liking him a little more. And he did things like that all the time. She liked him more all the time.

“I was going to ask you about that,” she said.

“About what?”

“About after I leave the ship. At Corwen. Is… will I ever see you again?”

Yixing gave her a broad smile, something like relief written all over his features. Was it relief, or did she just want it to be?

“I’m very good at finding people,” he said. “I’ll find you too. If you want me to.”

“I want you to,” Jean said quietly.

“That’s good,” Yixing said, clearly pleased. Silence for a beat, then- “Weren’t you going to your room?”

“Ah,” Jean nodded. “I was. I’ll have to carry you up the stairs,” she said, switching out the med bay light and making for the switchback stairs in the corner.

“Keep your voice down,” Yixing said in a stage whisper, “or the others might talk.”

Jean failed to keep from laughing on the way up to her room, and when she passed Kyungsoo on the stairs, when he saw she was carrying Yixing who waved hello as they passed, she knew she looked like a teenager caught by her parents sneaking a boy into her room. Kyungsoo only gave her a little smile out of the corner of his mouth and continued downstairs.

Back in her room, Jean set Yixing on the floor and sat opposite him, and he picked up a topic he had left off the last time they spoke, her medical training in minor surgeries.

He did this a lot. He asked her questions about her training, but never specifics about where she did it or how long she studied for. It was like he knew what not to ask. In turn, she asked him about his medical knowledge without asking about training because, if she was right in her suspicions, he didn’t have any. He wasn’t a doctor, he told her. In her head, she had a word she attached to him: healer. He knew the human body better than any doctor she had ever met, knew the intricacies of how everything worked without knowing any of the names for things. And just he knew how to put it all back together if it was falling apart.

“How does someone singe their ear?” she was asking mirthfully as Yixing relayed in affectionate tones how Chanyeol had come to him once with a particularly embarrassing injury.

“He- well, it’s Chanyeol,” Yixing said, meaningfully. He talked like this sometimes, like he expected her to know about the others and their strange abilities without ever having to mention it.

She had resolved to ask him about this soon, to ask him to explain how Chanyeol’s affinity with heat had made him burn his ear, when Yixing started laughing.

“What do you mean, it’s Chanyeol?” Jean asked, knowing she was fishing but he would shut her down if she went too far she knew.

“I mean, have you seen his ears? Chanyeol’s ears? Other people singe their fingers or their hair. Chanyeol’s ears are like that.” Jean covered her mouth to stop her giggles from carrying into the hallway.

“You’re being mean. I like Chanyeol’s ears,” Jean said, feeling like her friend needed a defender in his absence. “They give him character. They’re very distinctive.”

“I didn’t say I didn’t like his ears,” Yixing said, putting his hand on his heart. “But you don’t have to defend him so strongly.”

“Why wouldn’t I defend him? He’s been nice to me every day I’ve been on this ship.”

“Oh yeah?” Yixing was playing with something on the floor in front of him. He didn’t look up at Jean. “Is he just… friendly?”

Jean raised her eyebrows. What was that question?

“Everyone on this ship good to me,” she said honestly. Then, unnecessarily, added, “like brothers.”

Yixing looked up at her through long lashes she could barely see on the hologram but that she knew were there because she had seen them up close. She pushed away the sudden recollection of standing so close to him that she could make out those details, between the walls of the food stalls while they hid from Kyungsoo and Jongin. She was silent for too long and Yixing looked like he was about to say something, when a noise startled both of them.

“What-” Jean realised that the noise was coming from his side and hers. “Yixing, what’s happening?” She stood up, picking up the transponder. Yixing was looking down at something. Jean realised it was the console for his own transponder, the transponder on his side that was projecting her to him.

“I have to go,” he said. “But… I think I’ll see you in a few minutes. Get to the transponder room and turn on the beam if no one else has yet. It’s Junmyeon.”

Jean heard running feet outside her cabin door and looked up as someone knocked.

“I think someone’s already-” she looked back, but Yixing was gone. The ship’s alarm was still chirruping from the speaker by her door, impossible to ignore. Someone knocked again. She ran to the door and found Minseok on the other side.

“I know you don’t want to be involved in any of this,” he said, “but you’d better come to the transponder room. Junmyeon just called in. It’s about Red Force. We’re in danger.”

Chapter Text

The hologram in the centre of the room was incredibly handsome. Everyone on The Eve crew was handsome, but it didn’t stop Jean from doing a double take when she saw Junmyeon for the first time. He was kind of dishevelled looking, but in a stylish way. His navy jump suit was slightly too big, his dark hair slightly too long. A stray curl hung down over the centre of his forehead but he didn’t even seem to notice. Thoughtful dark eyes were framed by a pair of thick glasses, and he paced around the centre of the space like he was actually there, hands clasped behind his back. He didn’t look rushed, though, making the alarms still ringing around the ship mildly incongruous. He gave off the kind of patient energy that reminded Jean of one of the professors at the lab. He had been a nice man, older and quieter than his predecessor, kind to medical technicians like her. He disappeared around the time of the Powers incident, and she never saw him again. That wasn’t an uncommon occurance on the station; people came and went and they were never encouraged to make connections. Someone could disappear at any time. Red Force controlled a huge chunk of known space, and if that professor was still alive, he could be anywhere. Jean hadn’t thought about that professor in a while time; she hoped he was alive. It was the most she could hope for anybody she had ever worked with.

Junmyeon nodded at everyone who filtered into the room. After a minute or so Yixing ‘s hologram appeared next to him. Jean hung back by the door, leaning against the wall, ready to go should her presence cause any discomfort. No one asked her to go yet, though. The last crew member to join them was Baekhyun, and he just shut the door next to him and settled his back against it. She was staying then.

“Did you shut off the alarm?” Junmyeon asked. Baekhyun tutted and rolled his eyes.

“Of course,” he said, and Junmyeon nodded approval.

“Let’s get started then.”

“Is Jongdae not coming?” Sehun asked suddenly.

“I’ve already spoken to him,” Junmyeon said. “He’s going to meet us at the rendezvous.”

“Us? What-?” Baekhyun was silenced by a look from Junmyeon. It wasn’t an aggressive action, more of an assurance that he would get around to explaining what he meant. Baekhyun was instantly quiet, nodding patiently. Jean understood then that this was the real captain. This crew that seemed to have a somewhat chaotic lack of hierarchy were now all looking to Junmyeon for their cues. This was the leader, finally. Junmyeon stopped pacing and faced them all.

“How much ammunition is on the ship?” he asked. Chanyeol cleared his throat and glanced meaningfully at Jean. “It’s fine,” Junmyeon said. “You can go on.”

“We took on two crates of offensive hardware back at Stellaris,” Chanyeol said. “It’s a mix of weapons, but they all work off the same power cells so-”

“Lasers?” Junmyeon asked. He seemed to be trying to calculate something.

Chanyeol nodded. “The range on the rifle is about 200m but there’s only one. It’s mostly handguns and semi-automatics, but they have good accuracy if we need to get up close.”

“We practiced in the cargo bay,” Jongin spoke up, “but with the safeties on. Just the light, not the heat spectrum,” he was quick to add. From Junmyeon’s momentary expression of alarm, Jean wondered if the crew had form for almost blowing holes in the ship. It was almost funny, seeing them react to Junmyeon. He was like a teacher in a room of errant schoolchildren.

“What’s this all about?” Yixing asked, arms folded across himself. He was giving Junmyeon a calculating look. Jean thought that was a good question; a quick stocktake wasn’t enough to trigger a ship-wide alarm. And what was this about a rendezvous? Jean felt a weight of inevitability about this meeting. She had been steeling herself for days to leave the ship but something about what was happening now felt… final. She didn’t have days left with these men, she realised. She had hours, at best. She looked around the room and took each of them in, noting by their body language that they felt it too. Jongin had slung his arm around Sehun, holding his shoulder tight. Chanyeol on Sehun’s other side, was leaning into the younger man, while Kyungsoo and Minseok stood next to each other companionably, their arms folded firmly in a mirror of each other. She glanced at Baekhyun next to her and saw that he was biting his lip nervously. Jean put her hand on his elbow, and he started like he hadn’t realised she was there, then gave her a grateful smile.

Junmyeon looked around at all of them in turn. “I was ambushed,” he said, and there was silence in the room. “I escaped,” he went on when nobody said anything. “Obviously.”

“Do… do they know where you are?” Sehun asked, voice shaking slightly. He had stepped forward, towards Junmyeon, like he wanted to give him a hug but realised there was nobody actually in the space Junmyeon’s hologram occupied.

“They know I’m here on this planet, they’ve been monitoring all traffic, entering, and leaving.”

“Which planet?” Baekhyun asked. Junmyeon pulled a datapad out of his pocket and scrolled.

“One Seven Nine Five,” he said, reciting the navigation designation; the planet had no name, then. “It’s not habitable, too much volcanic activity.” He swiped his datapad and a framework model of the planet revolved above him. Little plumes of seismic activity marred the surface irregularly. If this was the official real-time record of the planet he was standing on, he wasn’t so much in danger as doomed if he was going to stay there much longer. Jean felt a small thrill of fear for this man she didn’t even know.

“There’s something else,” Junmyeon went on. “There’s some new kind of Sentinel. A new model I haven’t seen before.”

Jean’s eyes went to Yixing involuntarily and found that he was looking back at her. He must be thinking of the same thing she was, the Sentinel they had met on Fortuna. That was a base model. There were three other main models. The new one… she hadn’t realised how much time had passed, that the new model was already in field use. Jean realised that it was time she entered the conversation. Because if Junmyeon was surprised by the Model 5 then the others wouldn’t know what it was either. And they had to know about it because the Model 5 was, after all, built for them.

“The RF05 is the new weapon, the composite unit designed specifically for the task of collecting and converting power cells for offensive purposes,” she said into the stunned silence. She looked at Yixing while she talked, his calm expression helping her to keep her voice steady. “It was designed at my station using the data collected from… from the Powers.” She forced herself to look around at each of them in turn; they deserved that at least. “It was designed to collect the Powers individual capabilities and put them to use.”

Junmyeon, arms wrapped tightly around his midriff, eyed her closely. “You’re the doctor Sehun brought on board at Stellaris,” he said, and Jean nodded. “How do you know all of this, doctor?”

Jean took a deep breath. They knew she was on the run from Red Force anyway, what matter if they knew for what? She knew what she was afraid of, but she had to trust them. She looked to Yixing and he gave her a small smile and relaxed a little. She could trust them. She knew that, finally. These were good men. Or… sort of men.

“I worked in the lab where the RF05 was designed,” she said, “in the lab where the Powers were kept. I wasn’t on active duty when the Powers were actually captured. I did something and they wouldn’t let me into the lab.”

“What did you do?” Baekhyun asked, interrupting her. She turned towards him.

“They found out that I was stalling on the quality control for the new Sentinel model. They couldn’t prove it was sabotage, so they brought me back when they were short-staffed. I didn’t stay long after I saw what had been… I only returned the day of the breakout.” She wanted them to know that she had seen what they did, but she needed them to know that she didn’t judge them. She, after all, had known better than most what Red Force had planned for the Powers. She had, after all, single-handedly worked to delay the deployment of the RF05. If the machine had been complete by the time they were captured, they would never have escaped. She needed them to know this, but she also needed them to know that she hadn’t been involved in their captivity, in all of the things they were put through under knife and needle and narcotic. “I never saw them. I never saw… you.” She focused on Junmyeon, whose expression betrayed nothing. She chanced a glance at Yixing, and Sehun behind him, and saw their twin stunned expressions before she looked back at the ground.

“If you worked on the design,” Junmyeon said slowly, after nobody had said anything for a couple of seconds, “do you know how we can bring it down?” He glanced briefly at Yixing and then back to her. “The others assured me that you’re somebody we can trust. Even if you used to be one of them.” Junmyeon was trying to be kind, but there was bitterness in his voice that Jean understood that he couldn’t control. It stung but she knew where it came from. So, she nodded enthusiastically. They had vouched for her, after all. She wouldn’t let the crew down now.

“I have an idea,” she went on before she could think about what it meant, what it meant to her that the others trusted her. Nobody had ever really trusted her. She was determined to prove them right. “I’m not an engineer, my job was consulting on the neural pathways in the machine interior. The inner workings of that thing are surprisingly, um, organic. So that the kind of power the Po- that you - use can be manipulated. I have a theory about how to short it out.”

Junmyeon gave her a long look and nodded. He didn’t look convinced, but a last look around the room told her that he trusted the others enough to trust her too. “Good,” he said finally. “We could use the help,” he turned around, taking in the rest of the crew. “We need to move fast, though.” He looked down at his hands, translucent in the hologram but very real to him on Planet One Seven Nine Five. “My Power was harvested by the thing this morning. And Jongdae has only just escaped. They have his Power too.”

Chapter Text

“You’re alone,” Jean said. She was throwing her few belongings into her rucksack back in her cabin. Everybody else would be doing the same now, as they prepared to temporarily abandon The Eve to go and join Junmyeon and Jongdae. Yixing watched her jump in and out of the transponder view. He had called her after she and everybody else left the room because he had nothing to do for now. That wasn’t the only reason, but he didn’t want to confront the real reason he kept calling her, this quiet doctor who was on the run from Red Force.

“I’m safe here for now,” Yixing said, looking around himself at the empty apartment. “Are you sure about this plan? The reflector?”

Jean nodded vigorously, stuffing the last of her clothes into the top of the bag and closing it. She had been very thorough with Junmyeon about the vulnerabilities of the new Sentinel Class and Yixing knew that he and everyone else on the crew had a new appreciation for how dangerous a runaway Jean was to Red Force. Taking her in was a far bigger risk than they had bargained on.

“The energy output on that thing only goes one way. It’s got a weirdly human output and response sensor. It’s like gravity or force; like throwing a ball at a wall and dealing with the bounceback. But it has to lower its own defences to get the energy source out of its casing. I worked on the quality control for that, we couldn’t resolve the problem. At the point of attack, it won’t have a defence against that particular energy source or power. The RF05 won’t be able to defend itself against the same energy signature thrown back at it. You need a shock absorber or a reflector to throw the same power back at the thing.” She had explained all of this back in the transponder room. It made sense to Yixing. He thought he understood what she was talking about, but his power couldn’t be used like this. It would need to be one of the others, someone with offensive capability. If the Sentinel had already absorbed Junmyeon’s and Jongdae’s power, then one of those might work.

“I don’t understand how it absorbs the power,” Yixing said, scratching his ear.

Jean shrugged. “Me neither,” she admitted. “That wasn’t my job. But it stores energy in these cells in its casing so it can tap into them.”

Jean sat down in front of the transponder; on his side, she looked half-size, sitting on the low table in the living room. It was kind of adorable and he couldn’t help but smile.

“Are you going to be okay on your own?” she asked.

“You seem very worried about me,” Yixing smiled, crossing his arms. It was nice, her concern.

“If you get captured, nobody will know,” she said quietly. She was right, of course, but he didn’t want to think about that. He remembered the Red Force lab all too well and suppressed a shudder. There was a knock on a door and Yixing, caught off guard, jumped to his feet before he realised that the knock was on Jean’s side. She gave him a measuring look then stood up to answer the door. Low murmurs, and then Minseok appeared on the hologram, crouching down.

“Do you want us to pick you up?” he asked, without preamble. Concern marked a crease between his dark eyes. Yixing, his momentary shock at possible discovery wearing off, smiled at his old friend and shook his head.

“It’s too dangerous,” he said. “I think I’m too far away. Go find the others first.”

Minseok nodded. Yixing knew Minseok understood but he still looked concerned. “Will we see you soon?” he asked.

Yixing had been hoping to avoid this question. It was too dangerous for all of them to be together. The last time… when Red Force had trapped them in that lab… Yixing wasn’t ready to think about that yet. He could feel himself break out in a cold sweat at the memory.

“I have some things I need to do. Before I come back. Is… can you explain to the others?” he knew it wasn’t an answer. But Minseok knew him better than the others; they had been billeted together when they first left home, and he had never pressed Yixing. Yixing wasn’t as forthcoming as some of the others; he talked when he needed to and shut up when he didn’t, and Minseok was the same. He knew when to back off. This time was no different.

“I hope we see you soon,” was all he said, and then he tapped what must have been the transponder console because his hologram shook and left without saying anything else. Yixing took a deep breath. He should talk to them about… about how he was feeling. If it was one of them, he knew he could put a hand on their shoulder and their anxiety would ease. But he couldn’t use his own power on himself.

He looked up and found Jean watching him, worrying her lip.

“Are you alright?” she asked.

“Jean, please. I’m used to being on my own,” he nodded with more confidence than he felt.

“No,” she said, “you froze up when Minseok asked about you joining back up with the crew. He noticed. I don’t know why he didn’t say anything.” She gave him a long look and Yixing knew that she didn’t have Minseok’s patience. She would ask. And… would he tell her? As it turned out, he didn’t need to.

“I wasn’t on the station when you were there,” she said slowly. “But when I came back, I was co-opted into the clean-up. I know… I mean, I don’t know but I think I understand what it is you’re afraid of.”

“I’m not afraid,” Yixing said, realising as he spoke that his tone was a lot harder than he meant it to be. He scratched his ear, a nervous habit; he caught himself and stopped. “It’s not that I’m afraid,” he said, his tone softened. Jean was eyeing him doubtfully anyway. “Being trapped there was… awful, but I’m not like the others. I don’t- I can’t- they’re-”

“You’re a healer,” Jean said quietly. “Fighting your way out of that station… Yixing it must have been so hard.” Yixing blinked at her in surprise. Jean was shaking her head. Her face was a mask of sympathy, and it didn’t even bother him because she understood, and he was so shocked by that he didn’t know what to say. The others, they didn’t understand. They all had offensive powers or powers that could manipulate their environment. Yixing’s power was different. He could heal. He could cause damage but he didn’t; that wasn’t how he used his power. Like a doctor. He just nodded and Jean gave him a small smile of support.

“You’re packed?” he said, when he realised she wasn’t moving around anymore. She was sitting on the floor in front of the transponder. Jean nodded, playing with the sole of her shoe.

“I don’t know how any of you even got off that station,” she said quietly. Yixing didn’t say anything because there was nothing to say. If she was on the station after, she knew what they’d had to do to get out. What she wouldn’t know is what was taken from them that made fighting their way off the station easier to bear. They weren’t naturally violent, the Powers. They were never meant to be. They hadn’t even been on the station that long, though it felt like longer because of the drugs. But those experiments… the hours, the days, the pain… dressing your experiment subjects in white only made the blood stand out more on the plastic sheeting they had all worn. He didn’t remember much about the break-out, he had just woken up from some kind of induced meditation, but he remembered running. Corridors. Silver doors in white walls. It had been enough to wake something in him. An anger that wouldn’t be easy to put away again.

“Where will you go?” he asked, seeking to change the subject, to turn it back to her. He wanted to talk about her; to talk to her. He didn’t want to stop talking to her. He wondered if she might be going somewhere close by. Could he see her soon? “It won’t be safe to go with the others. You’ve done so much already; you should just try to get to Corwen. You’re so close.”

“I don’t want to go to Corwen,” she said. She seemed to be gearing up to say something.

“Then where?” Yixing asked.

“I don’t know,” she said, then she looked right at him. “I’m waiting for you to tell me where we’ll meet.”

Chapter Text

Jean climbed into Chanyeol’s escape pod. He was in there, dismantling the hard-lines that connected his speaker system to the ship’s power supply.

“I’m almost done,” he said, when he saw her. He looked different. Jean never thought of what the crew wore as a uniform, but they had all changed out of their navy-blue flight suits and the effect was jarring to the eye after so long seeing them in pretty much the same clothes. Chanyeol had managed to double his already-considerable bulk with a massive white sweatshirt. It was far more dressed-down than he looked in his crew clothes. If it weren’t for the four-barrelled gun slung across his back, he might have even looked cuddly.

“I didn’t come in here to check on your progress,” Jean said, and accepted the cushions that he started piling into her arms. She wasn’t rushing him, but he was clearly in a hurry. Baekhyun had given the shipboard warning that they were two hours out from the drop zone, and everybody was in a state of nervous excitement. Jean went on; “I wanted to ask you to do something for me.”

“Of course,” Chanyeol said enthusiastically. “What is it?”

“When you and Kyungsoo call back to the cockpit before you leave, I need you to tell the others that you have me on board.”

Chanyeol’s movements slowed, then stopped. He stood up as straight as he could manage in the cramped pod and turned to face her.

“You want me to lie?” he clarified. He looked wary, but not uncooperative. Yet.

“I… yes.”

“Why?”

Jean had thought about who the best person to approach would be. Sehun and Jongin were taking the ship’s only shuttle down to the planet’s surface with Minseok. The shuttle had space for four people, and if she wasn’t on board, she was certain that they would assume somebody else would take responsibility for her. It wasn’t that she wasn’t friendly with them, but Sehun and Jongin were both happy to get on with what they were doing. Minseok was the person on that shuttle who would need convincing. He would drag her off the ship if he knew what she was planning. That was just the way he was. He needed to be convinced she was taken care of. Baekhyun would be too busy to notice her. He was flying The Eve, and even if he caught her, he would understand her mission, so she had left him for last because he would be the easiest to convince. Kyungsoo might wonder where she was when the time came to evacuate, but Chanyeol was likely to go looking for her if she wasn’t accounted for. But he was also a bit of a soft touch, and she thought she could convince him to see her side of things. Jean felt guilty that she was using his good nature against him, but she had to get away from this ship.

“I’m commandeering the other escape pod,” she said matter of factly, and he stared at her for a number of seconds.

“What?”

“I’m taking the escape pod to go on to Corwen,” she said.

“You’re hijacking our pod so you can make your port call on time? You’re abandoning us? You planned the attack.”

“No, it’s not that. I need the escape pod because it’s too small to show up on a Red Force patrol’s sensors-”

“I know,” Chanyeol said, gesturing around him. “That’s why we’re taking this thing down to the planet.”

“I need to get into the port at Corwen undetected. If I can get to the civilian docking station, they won’t-”

“Corwen is a day’s flight from here, in a good ship. Will the pod even make it?”

Jean had looked into this. It would… just. The autopilot on the pod would fly it towards aid, she just needed to manipulate the onboard computer a little to make it believe that Corwen was the nearest port of harbour.

“Take it,” Chanyeol said, and went back to clearing out the pod. He yanked the cushions from her arms and threw them through the open door. His opinion of her was written all over his face: shock, hurt, with a tinge of anger. He had misunderstood her. Completely. Jean would need to rephrase her plan before she was confronted by Baekhyun. If they thought she was trying to steal their escape pod for some profit or to satisfy cowardice, then she had gone about this all wrong.

“Yixing’s on Corwen,” she hissed, looking around to see if anybody else was nearby, and Chanyeol stilled. It had taken her hours to convince Yixing to tell her where he was, and he had sworn her to secrecy. It wasn’t safe, he had told her. If the others were captured, they could be compelled to tell Red Force where he was. The faraway look in his eyes when he told her this, the hollow way he said it, told her this was something he knew from experience. He didn’t have to elaborate. She knew what Red Force could do. She’d helped set up the machines herself. The memory made her shudder, all the more so because it was Yixing who had suffered because of her actions.

“What?” Chanyeol was eyeing her, sceptically.

“I’m going to meet him,” Jean said. “He told me that he’s there.”

“Is… are you sure?”

“Yeah, I’m sure,” Jean had insisted Yixing show her proof. Yixing had spent too much time trying to convince her to get as far from anything that was going to happen with the Sentinels as possible. He had even told her to take the escape pod and disappear, if it meant she would be safe. He told her again and again to go to Corwen without telling her that it’s where he was too. Finally, when she wouldn’t back down, he’d shown her the control display for the apartment he was in, with an address for an apartment on the upper level of the residential district on Corwen. She had been shocked then, but also, strangely, pleased. He had been very adamant she should go to Corwen; had he been planning to surprise her like that day on Fortuna? Would she have felt a soft hand on her wrist and a rush of calm through her anxiety as she made her way through a crowded corridor, only to be pulled into a doorway or side alley? She had only actually met Yixing once, but she felt his absence. She wanted to see him. Now.

“He’s been on Corwen for a few days; he left Fortuna before we did, remember? He must have found a fast skiff off the station.”

“I guess so…” Chanyeol had stopped clearing out the pod and was just standing there, watching Jean closely. His big eyes were unreadable.

“What?” she asked, crossing her arms.

“He must trust you,” Chanyeol said. Jean shrugged; she didn’t know what to say to that. That Yixing trusted her had been a given for her since they met on Fortuna. There was a connection between them, an understanding, that she didn’t quite know how to put into words. Her medical training seemed to give him some comfort, like she was somebody he could talk to because he was also a… a healer. She wasn’t experienced enough, had never known enough people, to know if this was normal or not, to find this kind of connection with somebody. She had found something like a kinship with the crew of The Eve. She knew she was friendlier with Minseok and Chanyeol than with the others, that she felt what must be something like an older sibling’s affection for Sehun and Jongin, and she had a comradeship with Baekhyun and Kyungsoo that made her immediately relax in their company. What she felt about Yixing was that friendship and that comradeship, and something else too. She couldn’t describe it.

“I think he trusts me,” she said finally because the silence was getting awkward. Chanyeol regarded her for another couple of seconds, then nodded firmly and held out one of his big hands.

“I trust you too,” he said, as Jean shook his hand gingerly. “Be safe.”

“I will,” Jean assured him. She turned to leave the pod, but then stopped. “Do you need help clearing this out?”

“No,” he waved her out the door, “you should go and get ready to leave. I’ll see you before we… well, later.”

Jean left, feeling suddenly the imminence of leaving the ship. She was going to miss the crew, but she was also going to miss The Eve. Just like the crew, the ship had started to feel something like home.

Up at her cabin, she checked that everything that belonged to just her had been packed away, then shouldered her bag and, checking there was nobody who could catch her in the act, made her way to the second evacuation pod. She didn’t meet anybody, and when she got there, it was dark and empty. She opened the door, and climbed inside, stowing her bag securely under one of the crash couches. She had just secured the bag and shut the hatch under the couch when a soft ‘whump’ noise behind her made her jump.

“We’re not using this pod,” Jongin said, reaching up to the ceiling and prying loose a panel so he could check something inside.

Jean’s heart was hammering. “You should give me a little warning before you just appear,” she said. “I’m not used to your… abilities, yet.”

Jongin flashed her a winning smile that seemed to be his version of an apology. She would take it; Jongin had a great smile, and it was nice to be on the receiving end of it. “What are you doing here?” he asked. “Are you coming in the shuttle with us?”

“No, I’m not,” Jean said, making for the door. Technically that wasn’t a lie. “Is Chanyeol taking the other pod?” she asked, to make small talk.

Jongin answered in the affirmative, and Jean glanced quickly at the hatch where her bag was hidden and left before she would need to lie to Jongin. Whatever her noble intentions, she felt like she was betraying them by not being upfront about what she was doing. She was also stealing from them; the emergency pod would be missed when they all came back on board. If they all came back on board. Jean tried not to think about that eventuality.

They assembled in the cargo bay an hour later. Baekhyun was the last to join them, racing down from the cockpit and confirming that the drop zone was approaching. He would take The Eve into closer orbit around the planet and wait for them to get back, hopefully with Jongin and Junmyeon and everybody’s powers intact.

“Send the exact orbital pattern to Chanyeol’s escape pod,” Jongin told Baekhyun. He had a data-pad in his hand, doing last-minute checks. Jean saw that he had also fixed some kind of sensor array to the skin around his left temple, and occasionally his attention was caught by something scrolling across his vision that the rest of them couldn’t see.

“I sent them,” Baekhyun assured him, clapping Chanyeol on the shoulder.

Jongin still looked worried. “That thing was only built for a one-way trip. It’s got a good thruster on it, but that will only take it down to the surface. The engine has enough lift to clear the atmosphere, but it won’t be able to do much more than that on the way back up. You’ll need to be there to get them.” ‘Them’ was supposed to be Chanyeol, Kyungsoo, and I, plus whichever of the other two didn’t get in the shuttle with Sehun, Jongin and Minseok. I secretly wondered if the escape pod, which only had one fusion engine to give it lift out of Planet 1795’s atmosphere, would have a quicker getaway now her weight wouldn’t be factored into it.

Sehun and Chanyeol dragged out two crates and opened them. “Help yourselves,” Chanyeol said, gesturing within to the guns they had mentioned to Junmyeon. Jean watched Minseok pick out a heavy-looking hand canon with a dual-core energy pack. He looked incongruous in his combat gear. None of it matched, all clearly chosen for utility over style. Even with the big gun, he just managed to look cute rather than threatening. He clearly knew what he was doing with the gun, though. He weighed it up, then caught her eye and grinned.

“Do you want to try?” he asked her and fished around in the box with his free hand, pulling out a smaller gun with a single large barrel. He handed it to her, and Jean was surprised at its lightness. Jongin had the same model, and held it in both hands, demonstrating for her how to cock the laser by pulling back the top of the casing. Should she take the gun? She was already stealing the pod she might as well take something to defend herself with.

Minseok cleared his throat, and everybody stood back, watching him.

“Junmyeon told me to give you all a message, before we split up.” He seemed nervous. Even just talking to the crew, Minseok seemed to find it difficult to be the sole centre of attention. Jean gave him a small smile of encouragement, which he returned, though his cheeks were starting to burn. He pulled out his datapad, focusing on that instead of the expectant faces around him.

“Junmyeon said, ‘We are one.’” Minseok frowned down at the datapad, like he couldn’t understand what was written there. “What’s that word? Family, he said ‘we are one family, no matter how we might get split up. So, if it all goes wrong down there,’” Minseok checked the datapad again, and sighed. “aigo he said if it all goes wrong then we should get out if we can. And he’ll meet us at the LZ. Or he’ll find us, wherever we are.”

Silence followed this [fairly pessimistic, Jean thought] short speech, and then Baekhyun started to clap vigorously.

“Our leader really is a poet, isn’t he?” Baekhyun was saying, and Jean couldn’t help but laugh along with the others. It broke the tension, and the crew – now kitted out in their laser guns – began saying goodbye. Jean got a few shoulder pats from Minseok and Jongin, and Sehun put his big hand over hers, squeezing it tightly in an affectionate gesture that Jean was astonished by.

Sehun didn’t say anything, just gave her a small, tight-lipped grimace, and then walked off towards the shuttle. She was so touched by his gesture that Jean almost forgot to pretend to leave with Chanyeol and Kyungsoo. This worked out fine, because she was the last up the stairs out of the cargo bay, behind Chanyeol. At the head of the corridor that would lead to their escape pod, where Jean needed to turn, Chanyeol turned and gave her a very quick, very tight hug.

“Help Yixing stay safe,” he whispered into her ear. “You too. Stay healthy.”

It was more than Jean could stand; she could feel her throat start to tighten and could only nod before Chanyeol took off down the corridor after Kyungsoo, leaving her alone.

She watched him go, watched him disappear from her sight, and then took off at a run towards the other escape pod because she had only one shot at this. Moments later, she barrelled into the escape pod, slamming the door shut and securing the hatch, before seating herself on a crash couch and strapping herself inside. She pulled over the console tablet and keyed in Corwen’s coordinates. She watched on the ship’s main diagnostics board as first the shuttle and then Chanyeol’s escape pod decoupled from the ship. She took a deep breath, and then pressed the launch button for her own shuttle.

“Launch sequence initiated in-” the onboard computer started to count down from a minute, and at that second the comms flared to life. Jean hesitated, before opening the channel to a very confused-looking Baekhyun. A small frown creased the skin between his eyes.

“Who’s in- Jean! What’s going on?”

“I’m sorry Baekhyun,” Jean said. “I need to borrow your escape pod. I promise, it’s nothing you wouldn’t approve of.”

Baekhyun gaped at her and, for once in his life, he seemed like he had nothing to say. He recovered, moving his mouth a few times like he was trying to practice what to say.

“You’re not going to sell us out, right?”

Jean sighed, partly out of relief that he wasn’t already barelling through the ship to stop her, not that it would make a difference now. The pod was sealed.

“I swear I wouldn’t ever sell you out,” she said, emphatically, and he looked like he might even believe her.

“It’s too late to stop you, isn’t it?”

“Yes.”

Baekhyun nodded to himself. “Okay. I’m trusting you. Just… be safe,” Baekhyun said, as the launch sequence counted down the final five seconds.

“I will,” Jean assured him. “Goodbye.”

Then, with a jolt, the escape pod shot away from The Eve and the communication hard-line severed. Jean was on her own now, careening through space, in the opposite direction to everybody else.

Chapter Text

Yixing was on Corwen station. He was there, and he was waiting for her, and she couldn’t waste any more time because she had to see him now. These were the thoughts that sustained Jean as she hurled through space towards Corwen, strapped into one of the crash couches in The Eve’s spare escape pod. There was a strange smell in the pod, a smell she wasn’t used to and was surprised when she realised what it was: it was unused. The pod smelled like clean vinyl and oxygen tank air that wasn’t tangy from having run through the recycler a hundred thousand times. The pod would have its own air supply, of course. It was sealed up when it wasn’t in use so it rarely had to borrow from the ship. For a spacer like Jean every ship she had been in had the familiar not-quite-bitter smell of recycled air and repair adhesive, and people. The unused escape pod smelled like it had just come off a factory line, which Jean supposed it had for all the use it got. She had wondered why Chanyeol had chosen to clear out the pod he used as his own personal lounge instead of using this one, had just assumed that it was Chanyeol contraryism; he had a habit of doing things his way. After twelve hours in that sterile space, though, she understood that he probably opted for comfort over efficiency. She would have taken his pod with its modded speaker system and over-padded crash couches any day.

The tiny ship was only given a cursory query on approach to Corwen. Jean had been through all of its onboard systems by then and found a cache of call-signs and docking codes, so when she advised control that she was a pleasure yacht and sent them the necessary data to support that fact, they didn’t give her a second glance. Which was good, because any inspection at all of this ship would tell them what it really was. The ship was directed towards a civilian hanger, far from the commercial port that The Eve would have had to dock in, and so there was no sign of the Red Force patrols that would generally be on a station of this size when she gently bumped the disembarkation gantry. Before leaving the ship, Jean wiped the system and hoped Baekhyun could forgive her. She had effectively made their only spare escape pod into scrap by abandoning it here. It wouldn’t have the charge to take on a long journey, and there was nowhere within a day of this station except the place she had just left. On top of that, she had taken Baekhyun’s only means of safe escape if anything happened to The Eve. He would have an emergency vac suit but he would be stranded once he made planetfall… well, she didn’t want to think about that right now. If Baekhyun had been worried, he could have over-rode her systems and kept her from disengaging from The Eve. She shouldered her pack and left the little ship without looking back.

Jean had never been to Corwen. She had never been much of anywhere, but it was built to the same model as Fortuna and other stations she had been on, so she knew vaguely where she was going. Once through the civilian entry terminal, she tramped up the outer ramp and kept walking and walking as the crowds around her thinned, filtering off into markets and offices, or onto transportation that would take them deeper into the station. She had a vague idea where she was going. The residential level was higher up, and she had a number in her head for an apartment that Yixing had assured her he was in.

Still three levels below the residential district, her datapad buzzed. Jean stood in from the flow of people to check it. It was an ID she didn’t recognise.

Glancing around, she read the message but it was cryptic. Don’t hesitate, it said. Move on. She glanced up but nobody was around, so Jean kept walking. And walking. It took so long to get up the ramp that spiralled around the station that the night cycle clicked over as she was walking and the lights on the station dimmed to twilight. A thin strip of guide lights illuminated the walkway, and utilities blinked green and red and yellow behind grilles in the wall, invisible in the glare of artificial daylight. Jean felt her mind wander as she walked. She had always favoured the night cycle. She had never experienced a natural night on a planet and wondered what it was like. Short visits to terrestrial words had always taken place during the day. Where would she go with Yixing, she wondered? Could they go to a planet? What would it be like to watch the light fade naturally? To experience darkness that wasn’t mutedly lit by neon strips, or accompanied by the hum of an air purifier?

The thought of watching the darkness set in with Yixing warmed her as she walked. She was only more anxious to see him.

The residential level finally came into view, but immediately Jean knew something was wrong. She slowed her steps, but then remembered the message. Don’t hesitate, it had said. Move on.

She kept moving.

She saw the Sentinel before it saw her. Jean knew she couldn’t keep getting lucky like this, but the burst of adrenaline that she felt on seeing the white casing of the thing loom ahead of her out of a side corridor was enough to carry her past it before it turned its censor in a routine sweep of the surrounding area. She steadied her breathing and didn’t look at it. At it or… or the Red Force guards beside it, black helmets and opaque goggles hiding the human faces. It was easier to think of Red Force as the Entity itself, or the Sentinels, or the clones who managed the stations. But it was sadly true that people – real people like her and the people who carried guns or syringes, people who had had childhoods – were the front line of the organisation.
Trying to make her movements as natural as possible, Jean turned into a corridor further along the walkway, into the little maze of apartments, and recalled the number of the apartment Yixing was in. She had to warn him. Her heart started to hammer, and she fought to keep her movements sedate as occasional glimpses of the Red Force troops at cross streets potentially brought her under their notice. Better they think she was some tourist returning home. It would be better for her if she pretended that was the case, too. Jean stopped for a second to steady herself before moving on. She had to be brave.

The closer she got to the apartment, though, the harder that became. Just as she was about to round a bend that would take her directly to the apartment, she realised where she was going and stopped a split second before she came into view. She heard the pounding. She was astonished she could, over the blood rushing through her ears.

Red Force were outside Yixing’s door.

They were coming for him.

Chapter Text

Jean dug her fingernails into her palms and held in a scream of anguish as she heard the door give and the gas canisters burst when Red Force swarmed inside the apartment. She should run. She knew she should run, because any moment they might decide to look her way, to break into other apartments looking for the other Powers, but she couldn’t. She had to… to know. She had to know if they caught him. She realised that she had already resolved to do something about it if they did. She realised how stupid that was. After everything she had been through, after successfully staying under the radar for so long, she was going to risk it all… for Yixing.

Well, she reasoned, she had been about to risk it all for the others. She had intended, when she told them how to use the reflectors to take down the new Sentinel Class, that she would be with them when they did it. Why for them and not for Yixing?

There was a difference, she knew. She would have stood with the others. But she would stand alone against anything for Yixing.

And that, she also knew, was crazy. She barely knew him. But she didn’t care.

Jean was about to duck out of her hiding place, to run for the apartment and try to distract the troops so Yixing could escape, when a hand caught her elbow and dragged her at top speed down the corridor in the opposite direction.

Jean was running with him before her brain had even caught up. It was Yixing. He was alive.

“What were you thinking?” he demanded in a quiet, strained voice that she could somehow hear even over their hurried footsteps. Yixing seemed to know where he was going and dragged them in and out of different corridors and districts until the alarmed shouting that had ensued the second before Jean had been about to reveal herself, the sounds of discovery that Yixing wasn’t there, subsided. Yixing found a utility stairwell and pushed her through the door ahead of him, keeping their pace up as they descended through the station at top speed, back towards the port. Jean found that she was smiling – grinning, stupidly – even as she was running. When they finally hit the same level as the commercial port, Yixing paused and motioned her into an access corridor, finding a tiny room with a water filtration system inside. There was barely enough room for one person to stand, let alone two, but Yixing squeezed in next to Jean and slid the access panel shut behind him. They were face-to-face and Jean realised that she was still smiling.

How could she not smile, she reasoned? He was alive. He was alive and he was right there. She didn’t even think about the consequences of her actions then because there was only one thought in her head when she looked at him. It was the same thought that flitted across her mind when she worked in the med bay, in the dark of her cabin at night-time, when she sat up in the galley and let her mind drift: what would it be like to kiss him?

One-sided, she found out.

But then he seemed to realise what she was doing and kissed her back, and it was better than anything she could have imagined because it was him, really him, and not an idea of him that she dreamed about without even having to fall asleep.

Yixing brushed her hair back and cupped her face while she balled her fists in his jacket, holding his waist like he was all she had. He was.

They kissed for a long time. He didn’t say anything to her. He stopped kissing her long enough to look at her every once in a while, to let her see the way his dark eyes sparkled in the dim light of the water filtration unit; the way he seemed to smile without moving his mouth. Eventually, he pulled her into a long hug.

“Did you not get my message?” he asked.

“I got a message,” Jean said, her voice muffled by his jacket. “It was a bit vague so I ignored it.”

Yixing huffed a laugh that turned into a sigh and hugged her tighter before letting go… kind of. The room was very, very small and Jean had still not let go of his jacket and his hands were still on her shoulders.

“We need to get out of here,” she said to him, and he nodded, looking over her shoulder, at the floor, anywhere but at her. Jean began to get a sinking feeling. “Yixing? What are you thinking of?”

“The others made it to the surface of the planet,” he said, pivoting. “I had to destroy my datapad once they realised where I was, so I haven’t heard from anybody in a couple of hours. When found me, I was worried… I was worried they had captured the others. I was worried they had caught you.” He pushed her hair back gently from her face, sort of patting the side of her head lightly. It was an affectionate gesture but the kind of act that belied Yixing’s strange, not-quite humanness. Jean gave him a reassuring smile.

“I’m here,” she said. “I’m safe. But the others. Are they…?” she trailed off.

“I think they’re safe, for the most part,” Yixing said, pursing his lips. Jean knew this expression by now; he was anxious about something.

“What is it?”

“Baekhyun is missing,” he told her directly, and Jean felt a surge of panic. She had done this. She had taken his only escape- Yixing brushed his thumb against her cheek.

“He wasn’t captured. He wasn’t killed… we think. We would know if he was,” he said, in a steady voice that Jean thought he was putting on for her sake. “He tried some crazy manoeuvre with the ship. We’ll find him,” he said, but he sounded doubtful. Doubtful or something else, something Jean was starting to dread hearing. So, she said it first.

“You’re not going to join them, are you.”

Yixing sighed, then, almost imperceptibly shook his head. Jean suddenly felt a well of sadness open up inside her. She wouldn’t be going back to The Eve, then. She realised that she had been expecting them to rendezvous with the crew at some point. Abandoning the escape pod was one thing, but if Yixing wasn’t going back to the crew then she wasn’t either. She would miss them. She would miss all of them. But she couldn’t leave him.

“We should go,” she said. He let her pull him out of the utility room and back to the entrance to the port.

Once dockside, Jean scanned her datapad across an information terminal and they scrolled the options. Jean checked job listings, too. There was no shortage of demand for shipboard medics, and here there were two of them. They had so many options.

“There’s no place we can’t go, it seems,” said Yixing absentmindedly, but the way he was staring at the freight dock where a Fortuna-bound ship was parked told her he would rather go back the way he came. Back to the crew, despite what he said. Jean watched him for a couple of seconds, the faraway look in his eyes. Like he wasn’t quite here. Jean had never had a family. What was it like to be one part of a greater whole like that? Of course, the Powers were far more than a family, but she could barely comprehend what they actually were when they presented themselves in their human form. They seemed like normal men, most of the time. She shook her head, shaking loose the sadness of missing them – of not being served Kyungsoo’s food by Chanyeol or Minseok at the table in the galley again, of not being able to sit in the quiet cockpit with Baekhyun and listen to him sing, being startled by Jongin or amused by Sehun. She had only met him once but Junmyeon had been such a constant presence in conversation, him and Jongdae both, that she would wonder now what they were doing as the daily shouted updates across the galley or the cargo bay would no longer be a feature of her life. Yixing was all she had left, and she took his hand, squeezing it.

“There’s a planet in a system on the other side of the rim,” she said. “It’s not in contact with the Inner Systems, but there are still occasional freight runs. All contact is covert so the Systems don’t get nervous about disrupting their technology. But people do visit. Some even stay. There’s a ship leaving in an hour. They need a medic. If we hurry, we can-”

Yixing swore in a language Jean didn’t understand and gripped her hand harder. Jean looked in the direction he was looking and saw a Sentinel, looming over a dark mass of human troops, making its slow way through the throng on the dockside.

This was it. They were here for him.

“Run,” Jean said suddenly, and Yixing looked at her, unsure. She was making a call here about her own future, and they both knew it.

“Together?”

“Together,” she agreed, and they hurtled through the crowds in the opposite direction to Red Force. They ran through the docks, stepping lightly around boarding lines and kiosks on the concourse. Jean was exhausted already from their dash down from the residential level but Yixing barely broke a sweat. She appreciated as they ran how agile he was, how he seemed to twist himself around obstacles that, had he not been holding her hand, she would have barrelled into. He moved like a dancer.

They were halfway across the station before Jean realised that they were making for the ship she had suggested, the one leaving soon for the other side of the rim. That was a long journey, she knew. They would be ship-bound for months. That was months to get to know each other, months of time to spend with Yixing. She was still terrified that they wouldn’t make it, but the thought of being with him made it easier to push past that fear and keep going.

They were just at the gantry when Yixing stopped suddenly and Jean slammed into his shoulder. He reached out reflexively to steady her, giving her a “you okay?” look before turning towards the thing that had made him stop. It was another Sentinel. It was coming towards them. The Sentinel’s sensor was on and sweeping in their direction and, Jean realised, there was no way to avoid this one if they stayed where they were. The gantry was right next to them, and Jean dragged Yixing on and up through it before the sensor reached them. They were in the slightly-beat up cargo bay of a large ship before they stopped to breathe, and a small assemblage of crew were eyeing them curiously. Jean cleared her throat but was interrupted before she could speak.

“We’re not taking passengers,” one of the crew said, stepping forward. “Best you be getting back to the dock. We’re leaving soon.” He was a stocky man, unusual for a spacer. His translation unit was external, too, clipped to his ear. Everyone born this side of the galaxy had a translation unit implanted at birth. Jean wondered where he was from. She cleared her throat.

“We’re here for the medic position,” she said quickly, holding out her datapad open on the job listings. The man, the captain she assumed, studied the datapad and looked from Yixing to Jean.

“We only need one medic,” he said. “We don’t take passengers.”

“We’re both medics,” Jean assured him, at the same time as Yixing said “We only need one cabin,” and Jean’s stomach dropped through the floor at the implications of that statement. She felt her face flush and the captain raised his eyebrows at her before turning to Yixing.

“That’s generous, sailor, but we only need one medic. We’re on a long-haul and there’s only enough scran and air for one. I’m sorry.” He started to turn away from them, but Yixing held out his arm to stop him.

“Then take her,” he said. Jean was still getting over the shock of Yixing suggesting they share a bed so she didn’t register this for a couple of seconds.

“No,” she said, as soon as it sunk in.

“You said you’re a medic?” The captain asked, turning towards her.

“Y-yes, I’m a medic,” she stammered, “but-” Jean shook her head emphatically. The captain shrugged, but Yixing held his arm still.

“Take her,” he said. “She’s an excellent medic.” He turned to Jean. “You go,” he said to her.

“No.” Jean felt her throat tighten.

“Give us a minute,” Yixing turned to the captain, “and she’ll go with you.”

The captain considered Jean for a couple of seconds. Jean knew that he must be desperate or he would be telling them where to go. Leaving port for a long-haul without a medic wasn’t just risky it was stupid. He would take her, she knew. But she didn’t want to go. The captain nodded, and walked off, and Yixing pulled Jean gently into the privacy of the gantry again.

“I can’t-” she started, but he cut her off.

“You have to,” he said.

“You- I won’t leave you.”

“You have to,” he said again, reaching up to cup her face in his hands. “Go with them and…” he cast a furtive glance at the crew on the other side of the cargo bay, “if you get a chance, get onto that planet.” It was safe harbour, she knew. He would know too. A planet with no Red Force, no Inner Systems even. No connection to this side of the galaxy. But no connection to him, either.

Jean’s throat was painfully tight. Her eyes pricked with tears.

“Why do you want to leave me?” she asked. She knew it sounded pathetic. Yixing barely knew her. Just for a second, though, a single second, his calm demeanour cracked and Jean could see just how much this was hurting him too. It gave her a tiny measure of comfort to know that he cared. And she knew too that she had to go. And he wasn’t coming with her.

“I don’t want to. Since I met you, my mind was filled with you. I… I don’t know what we could have been. If we had the time,” he said in a low voice. “But we could have been something.” He said this so sadly that Jean’s tears spilled over, down her cheeks. He brushed one away with his thumb.

“Don’t forget about me,” she whispered.

“I couldn’t,” he assured her. “If I tried, I couldn’t. I hope I never forget about you.”

He drew her into his arms, hugging her tightly. “I’ll find you,” he whispered in her ear as he let her go, and she almost believed him.

“Find the others too,” she said, and he gave her a small, sad smile. If he wasn’t going to be with her, he should go to them. He gave her one of his tiny nods, and kissed her for the last time.

Before he left, as he was turning away from her, she took his elbow and said it again.

“Find the others,” she said, “and then come for me.”

Yixing cast a final glance around at the cargo bay, taking in the freight, the crew, her.

“I will,” he said. “I promise.”