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Chapter Text

9:58am

“So… is there anything bothering you?”

Wraith’s finger twitched against the trigger, and she let out a questioning hum as she looked Elliott’s way. Save for the gunfire, he’d broken the companionable silence that had settled between them since arriving at the firing range that morning. 

Without looking away from him, Wraith fired, and the target simulated the splitting crack of a helmet. Outwardly, she was calm. Even as Elliott looked between her and the target, red amongst a crowd of blue, in awe.

Shaking the expression from his face, he turned back to his own target. “Well, y’know, I can tell something’s on your mind.” As he spoke, he squared his shoulders and hit the target once, twice. 

“Oh yeah?” she asked, only because she knew it’d buy her some time. Time would run out, though. Wraith would eventually have to come clean. She liked to think she had mastered the art of giving nothing away, but damn him. Damn the way he could always fall into step with her, no matter where her mind wandered. And that was why he’d suggested a morning range session. If there was ever two people who weren’t good at the serious talk, for polar-opposite reasons, sure, but… “How’s that?” 

Talking with a calming distraction seemed to work best for both of them. And if you're a veteran Apex Legend, firing at targets that couldn't shoot back was the perfect calming distraction. 

“Uh, well, you’ve been quiet.”

She fired once more, and heard the hollow click of the chamber. “I’m always quiet,” Wraith retorted, discarding the empty magazine. 

“It’s a different quiet!” He was smiling at her now—a cut the shit, I’m trying here smile. “You know what I mean, c’mon.”

Maybe Wraith missed the days, all those years ago, when Elliott Witt was afraid of her. When did he get the courage? Or maybe, rather, when had she gone soft? She huffed, but said nothing as she emptied her next magazine into the heart of each target. At least that came second nature to her. When she was done, he was still watching her expectantly. 

“Yeah, I know what you mean.”

He cocked his head to the side.

“I’ve been thinking about what it’d be like to go back. To where I came from.”

Elliott’s eyes went wide. “Uh… y-you mean, like, Typhon? That’s-“

“It’s a pile of rocks now,” she interjected, “I know. I’m not talking about Typhon.”

“Then…?”

She dropped the rifle into the weapons cache and selected a set of throwing knives. Still needed the distraction, just something less noisy. “You know I don’t come from this world.”

“Right,” he said, recognition colouring his tone, “you played swapsies with some other you. Why haven’t you already, though? Gone back, that is… wouldn’t that be the first place you’d check for info?”

“It’s not that simple,” the tail end of her words were laboured as she flung a knife at a target. “Moving between dimensions is dangerous. You can lose your way back. You can mess with the whole… ecosystem… in a catastrophic way.” With the talking ball rolling, she turned to face him. He was sitting on the metal platform with his back against the opposite cache, knees drawn to his chest. He looked for all the world like getting up early to go shoot at stuff was never his true agenda. “That timeline belongs to me, but I don’t know if the version of myself that freed me is still there.”

“Two Wraith’s in the same place not good?”

Wraith shrugged, sinking down across from him. The late-spring sun had risen over the cliffs across the water, and it now fell in slivers over the two of them. “It’s an unknown. Maybe we got lucky when I escaped, that something bad didn’t happen. And… I might come from that dimension, but this is my home now.”

Elliott’s face turned unreadable. “And now you wanna go back?”

“That Wraith was looking for something,” she said, “I don’t think she found it there. And I don’t think she was looking for a dimension to settle down in, either. I just…”

She paused, not knowing how to articulate her thoughts. But sometimes, she’d walk into a place and feel like she’s been there before. Like something deep inside her feels the pull of familiarity, but she always lacked the ability to connect that familiarity to anything. For years she thought it was deja vu, or that it wasn’t something she herself was feeling, but rather a different Wraith channeling it through her.

Rationally, she knew they couldn’t make each other feel things. Her connection with the others was tethered by whispers, by thoughts. And she eventually accepted that the feelings of familiarity were her own, no matter how much the allowance scared her.

When she met Elliott’s gaze, his fingers were laced together around his knees. He looked at her intently, patiently. “Just what?”

“I’m curious, is all.”

It was a hell of a reason for tearing through time and space. It was a hell of a reason to risk it all. There was a difference between allowing the Void to swallow you and spit you out within the same reality, and using it as a vessel to carry you into a different one.

Then, Elliott’s eyes fell to his lap, his voice tinged with an emotion she couldn’t place. “If you go… will you come back?”

Oh. Vulnerability. That trademark Elliott shyness that didn’t exist anywhere but in private. That always made her heart feel like it was growing three times its size in a split second. 

She hated it and she needed it.

“Only because I don’t want to have to look for another job over there.”

At that, Elliott barked a surprised laugh. “Very funny…”

 “You think?” she replied, mostly rhetorically, as she stood. Closing the space between them, she offered him a hand, and hauled him up. As Elliott stood over her, their hands remained clasped together between their chests. This close, she saw the glint in his eyes immediately.

“What.”

A pout fought a losing battle against a smile. “Just, y’know, wondering if there might be… might be anything else keeping you here…”

At that, Wraith shook her head at him, rolling her eyes as she gripped his hand tighter and pulled him down to kiss him. “Maybe.”                                                                                                 

april 25, 2738

11:32am

Originally, she never intended to visit the Paradise Lounge. 

From the moment she first stepped inside, all those years ago, she felt that inexplicable, nagging pull. But she was dead against entertaining any thoughts regarding why. She’d been burned bad by assumption before, and she’d rather never know the truth than walk herself into another painful dead end. The only information she’d ever allowed herself to believe were the cold, hard facts. 

Documents, files, video, audio.

But the rest of her journey so far had turned up blank. Kings Canyon Peninsula was abandoned long ago, reclaimed by nature. No Games, no Thunderdome. In this world, it’s described merely as a ‘former research outpost’. 

If nothing else, reading that made her laugh. 

She did live here, though. Once upon a time. The address from her records still belonged to an apartment complex, but someone else lived there now. Searching her name bore few results. Which made sense, considering she worked on a botched secret project that needed to be covered up as well as possible. 

The whole thing was uneventful—she had a feeling it would be. And the longer she spent here, the more anxious she felt about getting back. At the very least, she hoped to feel different, just by being here. She hoped that, on some subconscious level, it would feel right, like finding the missing piece of a puzzle and slotting it back into place. No dice.

But in spite of that anxiety, something in the back of her mind kept telling her that she wasn’t finished here just yet. And as she stepped out of the public library, she found herself wandering deeper into the city. 

It wasn’t all that exciting, she supposed. The buildings were mostly the same, but some of the storefronts were different. Back home, Solace City was more like Apex Games City — it took up every billboard, signs outside every bar advertised live viewings of matches; street vendors selling knock-off merch and Legend-themed food and drink. The supreme lack of the Games’ presence here was the starkest difference. That, and the fact she could roam freely through the streets without drawing lots of unwanted attention.

It then occured to her that, since this was her home-timeline, someone could still very well recognise her. And while that’d be something, she kept her head down. 

She didn’t realise she’d been making her way towards the Lounge until she looked up and saw it at the end of the street. In this world, it somehow managed to look even more dilapidated than she was used to. Some of the lettering on the neon sign flickered, sending sparks flying, and a few of the windows had boards in place of glass. 

Wraith didn’t really know what she planned to do when she got there, or even why she was going there in the first place. But… if she thought about it, the Paradise Lounge was one of the only places in the city that she frequented. 

And if she really thought about it, she just wanted to see if Elliott was here in this world. 

She lived here, at least as a working adult. She worked in a lab on the peninsula. Had they ever passed each other by on the street? Had she ever stopped in for a drink after work?

Soon, she was standing at the threshold. A knot of anticipation wound tight in her stomach. For all she knew, this version of the Lounge wasn’t even run by Elliott. It might not even be in the Witt name. 

She pushed the doors open.

Seeing him was more surreal than she thought it would be. She’d been with him—her Elliott—just a few hours ago. His presentation was one thing he seriously prided himself on; always looking clean-cut and ready for the cameras. Well dressed, well groomed, good posture. Smiling, laughing, the works.

But this was a man she hardly recognised. A full head of messy curls, an unkempt beard, and glasses sliding down his nose. He was thinner, the hollows of his cheeks more pronounced, his clothes too big and hanging uncharacteristically off his shoulders. 

Even so, Wraith felt that rush of recognition. Free-falling right to the pit of her stomach as she stood frozen in place at the Paradise Lounge’s entrance, stronger than she’d ever felt it before as she watched him, unaware of her presence, working behind the bar.

Just go up and order a drink. Don’t be weird, or say his name or anything like that. Act cool.

She repeated that in her head like a mantra as she strode farther inside. There were other patrons, but they all seemed settled where they were. She caught Elliott’s attention quickly enough, her stomach twisting as they made eye contact.

What she didn’t expect was for Not-Elliott’s jaw to hit the floor, as well as the glass he was holding.

“Renee?”

Her name, her first name, escaped him like a long-unanswered question as the glass shattered on the floor. The chatter around them stopped, and she didn’t have to look at the other patrons to know all eyes were on them. But she didn’t even have the inclination to feel the discomfort of it—not when this Elliott Witt seemed to be experiencing all seven stages of grief as he gaped at her.

What, exactly, had she gotten herself into?

“Elliott…” She didn’t know why she said his name back. He used hers, though, and perhaps on some level it felt right, but not when followed with, “Do we know each other?”

Elliott opened his mouth to speak, before his eyes rolled to the back of his head. His head fell back, and with it went his whole body as he crashed into the shelving behind him, knocking a bottle of liquor to the floor as he slumped down with it.

Crap. This wasn’t exactly an outcome she anticipated.

But even so, her instincts kicked into gear. Elliott was hurt; out cold in a pool of broken glass and alcohol. This was Solace City, so most patrons go back to minding their business. But others who sat at the bar, who likely knew Elliott in this world, leaned over to get a look at him, wondering if they should do something. Some looked to Wraith questioningly.

Right. She’d caused this mess. Time to do what she did best back home when things got hairy in the Lounge.

“Alright,” she rasped, before clearing her throat and scaling the bar to stand on the counter. She faced the other patrons and crossed her arms over her chest. “Alright, bar’s closed, so clear out. Now.”

“Like hell!” Shouted someone from the back.

Wraith settled a steely gaze on them. As she did, she raised her open palm next to her face, and curled it slowly into a fist, channeling all her energy into the motion. Cold blue sparks of the Void coiled around her wrist, and she felt the familiar iciness of her eyes clouding over.

“I said,” she repeated, slow and dark, “get. Out.”

In seconds, the room was filled with the sounds of profanity and chairs scraping against the floor. When everyone was gone, she turned her attention back to Elliott, who was coming to. She carefully dropped to the ground on the other side of the bar, kneeling next to him.

“Hey, let’s get you out of this mess,” she said gently, reaching to grab his arm. He glanced blearily at her, and she felt him go tense under her touch.

“W-wasn’t a dream…”

He jerked his arm away, looking once again like he was about to say something, before he winced and touched the back of his head. His fingers came away bloody. 

“Look, I know you’re confused. Frankly, I am too…” She grabbed his arm again, despite the way he at first shrank away from her, and began hoisting him up. “But you’re bleeding. We’re gonna get you cleaned up, then we’ll talk. Deal?”
                                                                 

1:47pm     

                      
She offered to help with the wound once they got upstairs, but he said he was okay to deal with it himself. Which, honestly, Wraith was glad for, because she regretted it as soon as it left her mouth. And so, sitting on the old, plump couch in the loft’s living room, Wraith attempted to wrap her head around what just happened while Elliott fixed himself up in the next room. 

All she could think about was the look on his face when he first saw her. All she could think about was the intensity in his eyes. She’d never, ever, seen her Elliott look that way before—not in any of the hundreds of games they’d competed in; not on his Mom’s worst days. Not even moments before death.

She could identify it. She could understand what it was. It was the why that got her. Why did he look at her like that? What had he seen? What had she done to him?

For a moment, however brief, she considered that it wasn’t her that he knew. Another version of her, passing through this world. She considered that she’d gotten it wrong—that she had traveled back to the wrong timeline. 

No, came a Voice, you know you’re in the right place.

Elliott’s eyes were no less haunted when he emerged from his bedroom in fresh clothes. The sight of him made her stomach flip, and given the circumstances, she imagined that his did the same. 

“Hi. Are… you feeling any better?”

Elliott sat very carefully down onto the chair adjacent to the couch. He was looking anywhere but at her. “I just need to know. Is…” He paused, pressing his index and middle finger into the corners of his eyes. Just like her Elliott would do when he was stressed. “Is this a joke? Am I being pranked?”

Wraith’s thumb brushed hard against the knuckles of her opposite hand. “I’m not here to prank you, Elliott.”

“So you are Renee Blasey, my best friend, back from the dead?”

“I…” Feeling totally detached from her body at his words, Wraith swallowed. “Yeah, yes. I am Renee Blasey. But…” she shook her head, though she was unsure if it was directed at him or herself. “I don’t know how—how do we know each other?”

At that, Elliott finally looked at her. “How do we—what? L-let me get this straight, ‘cause I’m lost, here.” He stood up, and began to pace and gesture wildly as he spoke. “You disappear without a trace, you show up twelve years later, out of the blue…”

Twelve years. Wraith felt nothing short of nauseous. “Elliott-“

“…You say my name,”  he continued, voice getting louder with each word, “but then you ask me how we know each other? I-“

“Elliott!” She repeated, matching his volume. He stopped, mid stride, and stared at her. 

Truthfully, Wraith didn’t know what to say. How could she even begin to explain everything? How could she expect him to believe her? Oh, I don’t know you in this world, but I know you in the next one. It’s a whole thing.

“Tell me what you know about my disappearance.”

For an agonising moment, Elliott didn't speak. His whole body seemed to rise and fall with each breath he took, as if he’d been running for miles. Finally, “Just that you were working on something. It… it was a secret IMC project. But I only found that out after you went… went missing.”

This time, it was Wraith’s turn to avoid his gaze. “I’ll tell you everything,” she promised, trying to keep her voice calm, choosing her words carefully, “but it’s not going to be easy. There are parts you will have a hard time believing.”

His voice softened, then. “Like what, Ren?”

Wraith’s heart fell into her stomach. Ren. So intimate, familiar, and… and not at all. 

And that was precisely the problem, wasn’t it? He looked at her and he saw someone that, as far as she could tell, meant a lot to him. He could see everything they might have gone through together; he could see everything that made her who she was. 

But when Wraith looked at him? That was the person she loved most in her world. Who could anchor her to reality in much the same way a child grasped a balloon on a windy day.

And yet, while she was his Renee, he wasn’t her Elliott. Not really.

“I’ll tell you everything,” she repeated, voice thick. “But what you need to know is that I remember nothing of my life before I disappeared. You should also know…” She finally lifted her eyes to meet his gaze, “that there are other worlds out there. Alternate dimensions. So… so let’s cut a deal.”

As she spoke, Wraith watched Elliott’s eyes become gradually, almost impossibly wider. He blinked incredulously. “What…"

“Tell me the story of my life. My old life. And I’ll tell you the story of my new one.”

Chapter Text

PHASE ONE, PART I: THE EVACUATION

So, it all starts with what happened in Demeter, really. Y’know how it was kinda, like, the gateway between the Frontier and the Core Worlds? And then the Militia went and blew it up? It really shook up the IMC. All of a sudden the Militia wasn’t just some… puny ter-terrorist organisation, and they’ve got all the momentum, and the IMC doesn’t even know how to recover from it. And it’s like that for a few years. 

Then comes in Typhon. Your home. I think, at the time, it was just a colony of, like, scientists and IMC military and stuff like that. Growing though. Like, people had been stationed there and they were having families. You—the Blasey’s—you were one of those families. 

Then, uh… then they found the Fold Weapon. And they decided they didn’t want word of their plans with that getting out, I guess, because they wanted all the civilians gone. Just sent everyone to other IMC territories. 

You were sent to The Outlands.

6:14am                                                     

Renee wasn’t entirely sure what compelled her to sneak out of her family’s quarters, at the crack of dawn, in pursuit of her mother. 

The soft swish of the hydraulic door that separated her parent’s space from her own roused her from sleep. Through slit eyes, Renee watched as her mom stepped into the dim room. She pulled a cardigan tightly around her as the door rumbled closed behind her. She glanced between Renee and her brother, ensuring she hadn’t woken them, before pushing her feet into shoes and slipping out their quarter’s main entrance.

Slowly, Renee peeled back the covers. She lifted herself carefully from the bed, taking care not to disturb its overactive springs. Across the way, she noted how Jem’s dark hair fell over closed eyes, how his lips were slightly parted. He was still asleep. She pulled her hair up into what must have been an atrocious-looking knot, reaching over to her left wrist to grab the hair-tie wrapped around it.

Her mom just turned the corner at the end of the corridor when she made it outside. The halls of the IMS Hagopian were labyrinthine—they boarded this cruiser around two months ago, and it had taken Renee weeks to stop getting lost. 

She knew where she was going now, but, more importantly, she knew where her mom was going.

The purposeful stride she set earned her a few looks from guards on their rounds. Maybe it was that she was a fourteen-year-old on a mission at six in the morning. Maybe it was that, just a moment before, a grown woman looking just like her had passed by. 

Okay, maybe not just like. Same raven hair, same pallor, same piercing eyes. But Renee had gone long enough without a growth spurt that she was beginning to lose hope of ever inheriting her mother’s height. She also lacked that keen, bird-like resting expression; the lines of experience that contoured her face.

Passing through the wing’s mess hall, there were already people tiredly nursing paper cups of coffee in an effort to start the day. Some quietly conversed with one another, their voices bouncing softly off the walls of the large, mostly empty room. Some held their heads in an open hand, staring down at their phones, keeping blearily to themselves. Most of them were ship crew, judging by their white and blue coveralls. Renee caught her mom all the way on the other side, her hands deep in the cardigan’s pockets as she shouldered the exit doors open. 

Under the fluorescent light, she now recognised the cardigan as her dad’s—a scratchy looking cable-knit with giant buttons, and, despite the look of it, Renee could attest to how comfortable it actually was. Everyone was allowed just one suitcase on-board the Hagopian, and her dad had barely any room for anything else with how many cardigans he stuffed in his. Well, she supposed they were all guilty of the same thing. Jem packed too many pairs of shoes. Her mom crammed blueprints, journals, and a folder full of assorted, scrawled notes into her luggage. Meanwhile, Renee had a tabletop keyboard and sheet music in hers. 

Never mind that she hadn’t touched it once.

Another winding corridor and half a flight of stairs later, Renee reached her destination. At the end of the hall was a set of heavy double-doors with square eye-level windows, the word LABORATORY written above it. Across the doors was a sign that read, restricted access—authorised persons only.

Her mom was one such person, having been a higher-up in the IMC’s aerospace division back home. But that privilege didn’t extend to her husband or kids. Something about the lab harbouring dangerous chemicals and other substances; something about avoiding a potential quarantine situation on a supercarrier housing tens of thousands of Typhonians, on an almost half-year long journey to the far reaches of the Frontier.

Renee checked over her shoulder as she made her final approach.

She propped herself up on the balls of her feet, pressing her hands against the door as she leaned in to look through the window. The lab was considerable—maybe half the size of the mess hall—lined with several rows of workstations. Each had the name of its designated occupant scrawled in their respective handwriting on a plaque. Renee scanned the names until she found the one she was looking for. 

Violet Blasey.

But her mom was nowhere to be seen. Renee craned her neck, trying to see more of the inside, when a voice cut through her concentration.

“Renee Hope Blasey, is this your attempt at being sneaky?”

Renee gasped in surprise, whipping around to the source of the voice. Her mother stood, just around the corner, arms folded pointedly across her chest. 

“Jesus, mom,” Renee breathed, touching a hand to her chest. Her heart raced underneath her fingers. She’d been so wrapped up in not getting caught that she didn’t have a single notion that the Violet Blasey she was looking for was standing right there.

Her mom gave her a thin-lipped, amused grin. “Tell me,” she began, stepping forward as she produced a key-card. “If many have heard me, but nobody has seen me, and I cannot speak unless spoken to… what am I?”

Renee raised a questioning eyebrow. Then, she raised the other one, when her mom pressed the key-card against the reader and beckoned her inside.

“Really?”

Her mom winked at her. “Answer the question.”

Renee turned in a circle as she entered the lab, taking it in. Indeed, containers of many shapes and sizes—conical flasks, graduated cylinders, rows of filled test-tube racks—holding questionably coloured substances lined the shelving units against the right wall. Many were sealed, with biohazard labels placed on the front. 

“You’re an echo,” Renee said, following her to her desk. As a physicist, her mom’s space wasn’t remotely as dangerous as some of the others. She had a stack of journals and textbooks off to one side, and a little bobble-head figure of Heinrich Hammond on the other. Renee flicked it as she came to a stop in front of it.

“Ah. Too easy. Clever girl.”

Renee pulled out the stool from beneath the workstation behind her. “How did you know I was following you, anyway?”

“Mother’s intuition.”

She rolled her eyes at that. Then, “What have you been working on in here?” she asked, settling onto the seat. Back home, her mom was heavily involved in the development and advancement of jump-drive tech and, well, faster-than-light travel as a whole. Really, anything related to flight; moving things from one space to another—those were the kinds of things she specialised in.

That same grin from before tugged, unwavering, at the corners of her mom’s mouth. She leaned forward, bracing her hands against the lip of the desk either side of her. “Why don’t you take those for a spin?” 

With a nod, she gestured towards the pile of journals. Renee reached over and grabbed the one sitting on the top, and began flicking through it. The pages were mostly filled with jargon and equations she couldn’t understand, but her mom was meticulous about titling her notes. Renee paid attention to those, but still…

“I don’t get any of this, mom.”

“Not yet,” she responded gently, “but you will.”

At that, she glanced up at her mother. It wasn’t the first time she said something like that to Renee. She was never sure what to make of it; what she should make of it. 

What scared her more—the underlying expectation placed on her, or the absolute confidence her mom displayed whenever she said it? For as long as she could remember, Renee was known as the smart one. She was known as—thought of as—the carbon copy of her mother. A protégée in the making. Teachers at school would see her surname and automatically assume she was made of the same stuff as Violet Blasey.

“You don’t know that,” she said, casting her eyes to the floor, shrugging. She went to close the journal, but her mom reached across the desk in time to stop her.

“Ren…” she said, voice softening. The amusement from before vanished from her expression, replaced with a tenderness that could have been tempered in fire. “You’re young. You’re so young. But I’ve lectured auditoriums of university students with less spark than you.”

Renee opened her mouth to respond, but her mom kept going. “It can be tempting to be afraid of it. Don’t be. Listen to your teachers; teach yourself the subject if they’re no good. And never, ever sit around and wait for life to happen to you. Okay?”

With her fingers still placed firmly atop the open book, Renee swallowed as she nodded in response. Her mom retracted her hand, the intensity in her eyes melting away; the smile returning. She sat back on her own stool, then, before fishing a set of keys out of her pocket and unlocking one of the desk’s drawers.

Renee glanced back down at the page she’d left on. The title read, Inter-planetary travel in The Outlands?, followed by almost illegible notes relating to the subject. Current trends, inefficiencies, possible avenues for improvement. She enjoyed covering physics at school—her mom was who she was, and her dad was a freelance engineer, and they sometimes fought over who got to help Renee with math homework. 

With that said, Renee never found either of their respective disciplines particularly enthralling. But with that said, the thought that one day, she might be able to speak this language…

“Can I keep this?”

Her mom peaked over the tablet she presumably pulled out of the drawer, her eyes narrowing in consideration. 

“If it helps in getting you where you need to go,” she said, inclining her head, “I would love that.”

Scooting her stool closer to the desk, Renee rested her elbows against it with the intention of settling down and skimming absently through the rest of the pages. “Have you even decided between Gaea and… what was the other planet called again?”

“Solace,” her mom finished for her, her voice adopting that low drone it always did when she was focused on something other than the conversation. “Not just yet. The place in Solace offered me a senior position, but… Gaea is more my scene.”

“Meaning?” Renee asked, turning the page.

Her mom sighed thoughtfully. “I grew up surrounded by nothing but the temperate grasslands and rolling hills of Harmony. There was a certain serenity to it—the likes of which I’ve never felt anywhere else. Typhon is beautiful in its own way, but Harmony was named as such for good reason.” She tilted her head to the side, eyes growing fond at the thought. “From what I’ve seen, Gaea’s landscape is similar enough in appearance to Typhon’s. It’s got its own police force, too, and from my reading that’s an impressive feat for a planet in The Outlands. But Solace…”

Admittedly, Renee hadn’t done any research into the system just yet. She wasn’t even sure if she intended to. A forgotten system on the outer edges of the Frontier that the IMC didn’t seem to have time for; a place that may also be in the corporation’s control, but was likely a far cry from the life she knew on Typhon. 

That was about the extent of what she knew. 

“What about it?”

“Desert and swamp. Dog-eat-dog. Lawless. But I don’t have to decide until we arrive, anyway.”

Renee snorted. “You’re really selling it.”

Her mom shook her head in amusement, before turning back to her tablet screen. Finally deciding to read what was written on the page she had turned to moments before, Renee moved her hand away from the title it had been covering. 

She furrowed her brow when she read it.

“Mom?”

“Yes, baby?”

Renee turned the book towards her, pointing at the title. “Inter-dimensional travel?”
 
Her mom somehow managed to look both sheepish and excited all at once. The excitement seemed to win over, though, because she pushed her tablet to the side and leaned in close to Renee. With a hushed tone, she began, “Another reason I was considering Gaea… the position seemed a lot more stable, and less… well—“ she gestured to the journal, “the ARES Division stationed on Solace reached out to me about it. About researching the possible existence of alternate dimensions. Not many in the field would touch such a concept, given the outlandish nature of it.”

“But you’re kooky enough for the job?”

Her mom’s responding laugh was more of a sharp exhalation from her nose. “I’ll never be one to turn my nose up at a good hypothesis.”

“You don’t seriously believe in this…” Renee deadpanned. But if there was one thing she knew about her mom, it was that there wasn’t really anything she wouldn’t take a bite out of. 

Not one to disappoint, she tilted her head in genuine consideration. “I believe…” she began, her eyes searching the room for the right words, “I believe that for every choice we make, there’s a version of us who would have done something different—if our circumstances were different. If we did the thing we were afraid of instead of chickening out. If we never said that thing we regret. If you ask yourself, why did I chicken out, or, why did I say that, the answer would likely lie in our past experiences, and the past experiences that informed them. If it’s a path we carve for ourselves, a new one would branch out with every new decision… until it’s an unending, ever-growing network of roads. And if there’s as many worlds out there as there are choices, well…” She trailed off with a shrug. “It’s not a theory I would readily discount, no.”

As Renee listened, she turned the journal around to face her once more. What her mom said made sense, but… anyone could believe anything, couldn’t they? Belief was enough for some, but looking at her mother, it wasn’t enough for her. It wasn’t enough for the people on Solace who wanted Violet Blasey to help them prove it. 

The words on the page didn’t make sense to Renee. She was at the door—she was knocking—but no one was opening it for her. She couldn’t see behind it. 

Not yet. But you will.

“So how would you even do it? Travel to another dimension?” Renee asked, a challenging edge to her voice. Despite her mother’s conviction, Renee had been raised to question everything. And with something like this, Renee certainly wasn’t about to let her off that easy.

Her mom smirked at her. Challenge accepted, then. “Well, that’s what we’d be trying to figure out,” she said, “but I have a few ideas.”

may 15, 2715

4:25pm

“Table tennis.”

“Ping pong.”

Renee shook her head, exasperated, as her brother hit the ball back to her with his paddle. “Ping pong is the sound. See?” The ball bounced off the table once, before she sent it Jem’s way again. “Ping, pong. Table tennis is the game.”

She was well aware that Jem’s stance on the matter was, at this stage, entirely spiteful, but that didn’t stop her from arguing with him about it as they ping-ponged the hours away in the wing’s communal area. Stiff, faux-leather couches were strewn about the place, some with TV sets pre-loaded with movies, games, and documentaries in front of them; some with low tables and board games. There were boxes of toys in the area at the end of the room for kids, shelves of books with a handwritten sign saying take one, leave one. 

Renee didn’t prefer to hang out in here. There was this giant porthole window not far from their quarters; it had a thick, sloping ledge that was wide enough to sit on and watch the universe drift by. It was quieter, lonelier. The common room was always busy, and it always smelled a little musty—she only came when Jem could beg her convincingly enough.

Well, he won today.

Sure enough, his expression had taken on an air of infuriating, shit-eating defiance as his paddle once again made contact with the ball. With his free hand, he pushed his hair away from his eyes, only for it to fall back immediately down in front of them. “Ping pong,” he said, his voice lilting, “ping pong, ping pong, ping pong!”

“Alright, that’s it—” Renee was laughing, but her eyes steeled as she hit the ball with a burst of force that had Jem somewhat diving after it. To her surprise, he caught it with the edge of his paddle, giggling as he sent it arcing into the air back Renee’s way. With the corner of her lip pinched between her teeth, Renee pulled her arm back, watching, waiting, calculating…

She swung. The ball shot straight, like a bullet, and Jem scrambled before it hit him square in the chest and fell to the ground. Renee grinned wickedly, bobbing her head from side-to-side in triumph. 

As the ball bounded away from the table, Jem scoffed at his own defeat. “One more, one more, I almost had that one!”

“Sure,” she said with an eye-roll, drawing out the word, before gesturing beyond him with her paddle. “Maybe if you go get the ball, loser.”

Jem stuck his tongue out at her, then turned around and crouched after it. As he did, Renee saw a figure coming through the room’s entrance, who bent and picked up the ball for Jem. A familiar, tall figure with unruly hair and a thin moustache that curved a little around the corners of his mouth. 

“Oh, hey dad,” Jem said as they both straightened. Renee’s dad had a way of smiling with every part of his face except for his mouth—his eyes would crinkle at the corners, his expression alight, and shallow lines on his forehead deepening with the upward movement of his eyebrows. He looked that way now at Jem, then Renee, as his eyes flicked her way.

“Monkey One,” he said, voice business-like as he regarded Renee with a nod. His gaze fell back over Jem, and he gave him the same nod. “Monkey Two. Who’s winning?”

As Renee raised her paddle-hand in the air, Jem yelled out. “Me!”

At that, the smile lopsidedly reached her dad’s mouth. He popped the ball into the air and let it fall back towards his awaiting open palm. “Dinner’s soon,” he told them, “now, I don’t know how up to it your mother is, but…”

Right. Her mom was still sick, had been for more than a week now. It was the first time Renee had ever heard of a sinus infection—something that had evolved from a flu that left her mother bed-bound, tender-muscled, and without much of an appetite. Worse, with the IMS Hagopian’s strict quarantine rules, she wasn’t allowed to leave her room in their quarters. Renee and Jem weren’t allowed to go in and see her; their parents both had to wear surgical masks when their dad tended to her, and he had been sleeping on the floor of Renee and Jem’s room since she fell ill. 

Her dad slid his hands into his back pockets. In that fleeting moment, Renee caught something in his expression she’s sure she wasn’t supposed to. The hard set of his chin, pulling down the corners of the same mouth that had just been smiling. Worry, tension, something along those lines. Then, it was gone, and he continued what he was saying with a waggle of his eyebrows.

“I was wondering if you were up for a little trade? Mine and mom’s share of dessert… if you do the laundry.”

Renee would have just done the laundry for her dad, but she supposed her brother, being twelve, was still at the age where he needed a little positive reinforcement every now and then. She also supposed that this whole thing had been hard on him. Harder than it had been for her. When they learned that Typhonian citizens were being permanently displaced—or reassigned, as the IMC preferred to call it—Renee remembered feeling mostly neutral about it. She took her cue from her mom, a constant beacon of practicality; of a the only way is through mindset. Those were the words her mother had used to comfort her father, who grew up in Typhon, who could always be counted on to take things a little more sensitively. 

And that’s where Jem took his cue from. 

As the two of them each hauled a large canvas bag of dirty clothes towards the laundry facility, Renee reminded herself of this fact. Her mom had always called him a helicopter husband—someone who over-fretted about everything to do with his wife and his kids. This was no different, just heightened by the fact they were stuck on this cruiser, halfway across the universe from their home.

“Hey, Ren?”

Renee hummed. A few steps ahead of her, Jem turned his head just slightly, his eyes veiled by his hair. He needed a haircut—hadn’t had one since the barber’s back home closed down before they all left. It was a wild, out of control mop on his head, but he refused to let anyone but a “professional” touch it.

“How long do you think we’ll be in The Outlands?”

Renee furrowed her eyebrows. Hadn’t anyone told him—or, hadn’t he picked it up—that this whole thing was permanent? “Jem…” she shook her head in disbelief, “you think the IMC packed us all onto these ships for a holiday?”

“No,” it was Jem’s turn to shake his head, “I know it’s not a holiday. But, like, they can’t keep us out forever, right? Someday we could go back.”

“Yeah, maybe, I guess. Why would you wanna do all this again, though?”

She couldn’t see Jem’s face, but he shrugged his shoulders. “It’s home.”

Renee laughed humorlessly. She’d been on this ship for long enough that home, as a concept, felt pretty relative. “You know,” she began, unsure if she should be tactful around Jem’s feelings on the subject. On the one hand… yeah. Typhon was home. Jem was right about that. But on the other, Renee didn’t see them ever being able to go back. This whole thing seemed pretty final. 

New system, new planet, new jobs, schools, friends… new lives. 

“I always think home is just… the four of us.” She was attempting to keep her voice cool, detached—despite her words. “It’s not, like, walls and a roof. Or even a specific place. I wouldn’t be getting my hopes up, anyway.”

Jem didn’t have a response. Or, maybe he stayed quiet because it wasn’t the direction he wanted the conversation to go. Either way, the rest of the walk was silent. Jem didn’t say much while they waited for their laundry, either, just played quietly on his handheld with a sullen face. Renee tried not to get equally annoyed with him in return; tried to cut him some slack, but… none of this was her fault.

As they rounded the corner onto the corridor leading back to their quarters, Renee was mostly over the whole thing. Jem still hadn’t spoken, but his expression had returned to normal somewhere along the way. Suddenly, as they drew closer, he said, “If there’s still time before the curfew, you wanna go play video games in the rec room?”

Renee huffed to herself at that. She felt thoroughly as though she’d hung out enough with him today, but…

“Sure,” she said, pressing her key-card onto the scanner outside their door. It slid open, and they dumped the bags of clean clothes just inside. She called out to her dad in the next room, in case he hadn’t heard them coming in, and she hoped inwardly that her mom was feeling well enough to eat. When he didn’t answer, Renee crossed the room towards the door leading to her parent’s room, and to her surprise, it was unlocked, and slid open on it’s own. 

Inside, the bed was empty. 

Behind her, Jem’s voice, knowing their mother was still supposed to be quarantining, had raised an octave in acute alarm. 

“Where’s mom?”

This time, it was Renee who didn’t have an answer. Instead, she turned swiftly on her heel and ran back out the door, in the direction of the ship’s medical bay.

may 18, 2715

8:31pm

When Renee was eight years old, she fell off her bike while out playing with her brother.

Near their house was a dried up creek—a winding trench of loose shale and soft rock that had once been carved lovingly and gradually by the stream it once contained. Tall, gnarly trees bordered either side of it. Their trunks would cut the sun's rays between them as it rose and set, and it would fall in ethereal slices over the uneven ground.

Their parents had a view of the creek from the kitchen window, so Renee and Jem were allowed to go there by themselves as long as they stayed within that view. And the two of them spent a lot of time there. They lived far enough outside the nearest city of Negara, where they went to school, that play dates with their friends were few and far between. 

Renee had ventured out there with her bike before. She liked to ride down the centre of the creek, where the stream used to be, and follow its winding route as fast as she could. That day, Jem was chasing her with a plastic sword, and she was pretending to be a criminal on the run. As she looked over her shoulder, she let out a shrieking laugh when he appeared right on her tail. He swung the sword. At the same time, the front wheel of her bike caught a large rock in the ground.

It only took a few seconds. One moment she was on the bike, the next, she was sailing through the air over its handlebars.

A broken left wrist, and a small, triangular piece of shale lodged firmly in her right palm. She remembered laying there, wailing as her brother ran back to the house for their parents. Her dad brought her to the hospital, and the drive was long. He kept telling her not to move her left hand at all. He kept telling her not to worry, even as he strained to keep his own voice calm.

By all accounts, everything was just fine. But it was Renee’s first real visit to a hospital, and she was stuck there for hours between all the waiting, the x-ray, and having the stone removed from her hand by an old, quiet, stern nurse with a thin pair of tweezers.

By all accounts, everything was just fine. But when she finally got home, her six year old brother’s face was still red and puffy. He thought he’d killed her with his toy sword, and their mother couldn’t convince him otherwise until he saw Renee for himself.

Renee had gotten it into her head that the whole thing was an awful, awful experience. She hated hospitals. The smell, the endless corridors, the feeling that the place was somehow both too bright, too white, yet dark and gloomy. Sick people, hurt people; people in white coats and masks covering their faces. She never wanted to go again.

That was only six years ago. A fourteen-year-old would like to think they’re a completely different person to when they were eight. But now, Renee sat alone in her family’s quarters onboard the IMS Hagopian, a million miles from home, from that creek. Her feet dangled off the side of her bed, and they didn’t touch the ground. Her mom had been rushed to the medical bay three days prior. Her sinus infection had evolved into meningitis, and with her already weakened immune system, she went downhill hard and fast. Renee hadn’t gone to see her since that night.

Like a small, scared child.

She was chewing a hole into her lower lip when the entrance slipped open. She didn’t look to see who it was, but they lingered by the open door.

“Ren,” came a small, croaking voice. Jem. He had been doing the right thing, staying by her side as much as he was allowed. Meanwhile, Renee had been paralysed by her own cowardice—sitting here, clutching her mother’s notebook in her lap, weighed down by an invisible force. “Mom wants to see you, Ren.”

The magnitude of her absence hit Renee like the heavy footfall of a leviathan. If her mother wanted to see her after all this time, it could surely only mean one thing.

Jem fell into step with her as they walked down the corridor towards the medical bay. She wasn't sure who initiated it, but somewhere along the way, she realised she was tightly clasping his hand. She had never really known a life without him. She wasn’t even two years old when he came into her life; they grew up together. They shared toys, friends, and new experiences.

But they hadn’t experienced loss together. Not yet.

The room was dim, unlike the rest of the facility, when Renee arrived. She stood frozen at the threshold, eyes fixed on her mother. Pale skin, thin covers at her waist, the bones in her face more prominent than Renee could ever remember. Renee fought back the rising panic in her chest at the sight of her, at the chemical stench of the place, at the sound of the heart monitor beeping; at her dad, tears streaming freely down his face at her bedside.

Her mother stirred in place, and her eyes cracked open a sliver. Her dad was holding one hand in both of his, and she held her free one out to Renee.

Swallowing down the thick lump in her throat, Renee found her feet doing the thinking for her, and she crossed the room to the other side of the bed. Her mother’s hand was cold and clammy.

“There’s something…” her mother began weakly, “something I want to tell you, before I go.”

Renee’s eyes stung, words rising up her body, but dying in her throat.

“The most… powerful thing in the universe is—“ she paused, trying to catch her breath, straining to keep her eyes open. All Renee could think was… this was all wrong; this was not supposed to be happening right now. She hadn’t had enough time with her mother. And if what she was trying to say was going to kill her, Renee didn’t want to hear it.

“Mom—“ she said, tasting salty tears. She grasped her mother’s hand tighter. “Just gather your strength. You can tell me in a minute.”

She leaned back against the pillow and looked up to the ceiling. The beeping of the monitor began to slow, and the muscles in her hand began to relax.

“I love you,” her mother said, closing her eyes with a soft smile. The words came as a breath of air. A final breath.

“I love you, I love you, I love…” 

Chapter Text

You got to Solace a little after your ma, uh… after she passed. 

You and Jem started school that year, and I met him out in the schoolyard the first week. First thing he said to me was that he was from Typhon. He was real proud of that—always was. I thought he was cool, right off the bat… probably tried a little too hard to be his friend, but… I guess it worked. And—and he wanted to be my friend, too.

But you… I dunno. You had kind of a rocky start, from what I remember.

This was also around the time that the Battle of Typhon happened. It… well, to cut a long story short, the Militia lost. The IMC got Harmony with the Fold Weapon. The Militia never really regained their footing. 

And… all your ma’s family were still living in Harmony at the time, so they… y’know. I’m sorry.
                                                                                                    

5:44pm

Renee’s dad sat across from her at the kitchen island, his work coveralls half unzipped, exposing the grey oil-stained t-shirt beneath it. A fleck of the stuff had been smeared across his employee card sticking out of his breast pocket, obscuring the name, Ethan Blasey, on the top.

A hand dragging itself over the top of his head had flattened his usually wild mop of hair, and he now ran his thumb between his upper lip and the facial hair above it, which had filled out considerably in the four months they had been on Solace.

Four months. 

She had never seen her dad look disappointed in her. She knew the look, she had seen it directed at other things, other people. But never at her. Renee hid bruising knuckles between her thighs, under the surface of the kitchen island, despite her dad knowing about them, despite them being the reason they were here in the first place. And he stared at her, with that awful expression, not repeating the question he’d asked her moments before.

Just waiting.

The radio played quietly from atop the fridge in the corner of the room, repeating the same headlines over and over again. Unnamed simulacrum assassin strikes again in Malta, kills twelve, injures five. Landslide outside of Kómma with no casualties. Frontier Militia’s invasion of IMC-controlled planet, Typhon, still ongoing—following the unexpected destruction of the moon, Orthros, which orbited the planet.

Through the open archway leading into the living room, Renee could see in her periphery that Jem was playing a game on the big TV, pretending he wasn’t listening. It was the end of the school day, and he was waiting outside the main entrance when it had all gone down. Renee breezed right past him, wouldn’t tell him much of what happened. Of course he was curious.

Before the silence that stretched between them, her dad had asked for her side of the story—having been on the phone with the school’s principal. He was still at work when he took the call. 

She took a deep breath, and began.

In short, Renee got knocked onto her ass by some punk at her new high school. In full…

It wasn’t something that had ever happened to her before. Looking down at her phone as she waded through the mass of students in the main foyer, not watching where she was going. Bumping into the back of someone else, muttering a halfhearted excuse me as she sidestepped out of the way. 

The other kid snarled a hey, watch it. She ignored them, going on her way. 

Big mistake, apparently.

A hand planted itself onto her shoulder from behind, jerking her back. She whipped around, readying an insult on her tongue, and was met with a disproportionately angry face, reiterating that they told her to watch it. 

By now, other students were giving them a wide berth as they passed by. Renee liked to think she was a reasonable, level-headed person. Some part of her—some tiny, far-off part of her—knew that the kid was either having a bad day, and taking it out on her, or they usually got off on terrorising anyone they deemed a worthwhile target. This school being located in east Solace City, just a block away from central; this kid sporting a scar on their lower lip and a greasy, chin-length blond mop… those things told Renee it was most definitely the latter, and she probably shouldn’t react with equal aggression.

Unfortunately, Renee herself fell into the category of the former. The bad day. The bad week (though it was only Monday). The bad month. 

Bad year.

But the fact that she was standing here at all, in this foyer, this school, this city, this planet… she was decidedly here against her will. The only reason they came to Solace at all was… 

They should’ve been in Gaea. Gaea would’ve been better. But it didn’t matter anymore, did it? Not when she… her mom—

So no. Renee split her knuckles against the other kid’s face, instead of doing the reasonable thing. 

The way adrenaline injected itself into her veins; the way, for just a moment… it felt good, watching their head fly back with the impact, as their grip on her shoulder loosened enough for her to break free. 

For just that split second, Renee could think to herself, good—teach you to fuck with me. 

And then, she was on her ass. 

The other kid looked down at her with blood trickling from their nose, huffing a laugh, like it was effortless. Her right knuckles throbbed. People stopped passing by, instead, they stood and watched. Some laughed. Some let out a low, drawn-out ooh. They tilted their chin upwards, said, you’re that freak from Typhon, huh? How’s the war going over there? All your family dead yet?

Two things happened in the blink of an eye. First, the conversation she’d had with her brother, all those months ago, came to mind. She told him not to miss Typhon too much. Not to miss their childhood home too much. She told him it wasn’t what mattered. 

She really believed the words she said, too. But now that everything had changed, now that everything was different, now that…

Second, she found her feet. Her arms were outstretched, and she was gunning for this kid’s neck. 

Fingers wrapped around a throat; a handful of her hair scrunched into a fist, yanking backwards, and—

A teacher intervened before things could really get started. 

It looked bad for Renee. The teacher hadn’t seen the whole altercation, and the fact was, she drew first blood. The shove to the ground came after, and the kid fell effortlessly into character, pinching the bridge of their nose and tipping their head back, the words self defence, self defence, spilling from their mouth. 

So while the kid was shipped off to the nurse, Renee was dragged by the elbow to the principal’s office.

It was after the last bell, and the principal—Mrs. Brinkman—was shuffling papers into an open briefcase on her desk when Renee was, for the second time that day, shoved into the room. Principal Brinkman’s face fell at the sight. She clearly wanted to go home. The other teacher told her, briefly, what had happened—that they’d caught Renee assaulting another student in the main foyer. Several eyewitnesses. Gave the other kid a bloody nose.

The principal seemed to study Renee for a moment, before saying anything at all. She moved her briefcase to one side, gesturing with her other hand for Renee to sit. “Miss Blasey,” she began. Renee didn’t expect her to know her name. “Not even three weeks here, and you’re already on my radar.”

Renee crossed her arms over her chest, looking down at her shoes. She’d never been in trouble at school before; couldn’t even remember the last time she’d gotten a late slip or been absent. She never spoke out of turn in class, never skipped homework or assigned reading. She never even failed a test. 

She never hit anyone before, either. But this past year had been full of unsolicited firsts—might as well keep the trend going, right?

Undeterred by her silence, Principal Brinkman continued. “You know, there’s almost a thousand students attending this school. It’s my job to know all of them, to understand who they are and where they come from. It’s not an easy job. But I do know that you’re one of six Typhonian children who have started here this year. I myself am from Gaea. Solace, especially Solace City, is a lot to get used to if you’re not originally from here.”

Renee lifted her eyes, not her head, to meet the principal’s. That much was true. It wasn’t just Solace that Renee had trouble adjusting to, it was city life. It was the car-horns blowing, the sirens wailing, all day, all night, entirely audible from her sixth-floor apartment in the heart of the city. It was learning to keep her head down when she was out and about. Gone were the days of nodding a hello to passers-by, of living in a safe world, ruled by intellect, common-ground, and common interests. 

She might as well have been thrown into a prowler’s den and told to make a life of it. 

The principal turned to a filing cabinet against the back wall behind her desk, and flipped through one of the drawers until she found what she was looking for. She pulled a document out, and Renee saw a flash of her own last name. 

Great.

“Some of the preconceptions you will have had about Solace, before getting here, are true. The IMC has jurisdiction here, but beyond providing security, resources, and fine establishments such as this high school, our society is largely self-governed. Much of the violence you see and hear of here, and of course, the Outlands as a whole, is tolerated. But,” she paused, throwing a pointed look Renee’s way. “I do not tolerate violence.”

Gone were the days that Renee was known as her mother’s child. She pressed her mouth into a thin line. “I’ve never done that before.”

“You’re a girl of few words, Miss Blasey,” said the principal, eyes scanning the document laid flat on the desk. Renee wished she’d stop calling her that, wished she’d stop reading her file. “But seemingly, one of many talents. Your old headmaster left a note, called you a model student; a brilliant mind who would go far in this life.”

She looked down again. Never mind, then. But, it was her next words, really, that threw Renee off.

“You must feel like your intellect is wasted in a place like this.”

Renee’s brow furrowed. What? “I—“

“It is,” the principal went on, “we’re criminally underfunded, overcrowded, and understaffed. Students only have to stick out their education until they’re sixteen in Solace, and that’s why the last two grades are always much smaller than the former four. But the teachers here… they care. I make sure they care. I can tell you have plans for your future, and I can also tell you think you have to get there on your own, that this school can’t help you.”

Renee sat up straighter, an emotion building within her that she couldn’t place. Since sitting down in this chair, this woman seemed hell-bent on calling out her—what, her prejudices? All the ways she thought she was better than everyone else? Who did she think she was? 

“You must know everything about me.” 

Principal Brinkman gave her a tight smile, meeting her eyes once more. “I know enough. You didn't start that fight. That student is a troublemaker; I will be dealing with them. My point is…”  

She sighed, like she didn’t want to say what she was about to. “My point is, I know you’re smart. I know you’re exceptionally smart. It says here your mother passed away not half a year ago. I’m sorry for that. I’ve seen this kind of thing time and again—the anger and injustice of losing a parent… I don’t want to see you going down the wrong road. It feels better in the moment, I know, but you’ll look back on it with regret. Find a healthy outlet for that anger, and use it to get where you need to go.”

At the mention of her mom, Renee dug her thumb into her bruising knuckles, swiping hard across each of them. How dare the principal bring her up? How dare—

She shut her eyes tightly, just for a second. 

She was right. She was right, about everything. Renee wasn’t even aware of her own superiority complex until Principal Brinkman pointed it out, but it was there, wasn’t it? Since starting here, she hardly listened in class, hadn’t bothered to try and make any friends. Just went around like a zombie, watching the clock, waiting for it all to be over.

Breaking the number one rule: never, ever sit around and wait for life to happen to you.

When Renee finished speaking, the voice of the news anchor still streamed through the radio’s speakers. Having left out the conversation she’d had with the principal, Renee chanced a glance at her dad, and the look of disappointment had been replaced by one of sadness, one of worry. 

At that, Renee decided she'd rather the disappointment. 

This whole thing… it was the last thing he needed right now. He was already working harder than he ever had, trying to survive as a single father of two children in this city. He was already a… already a widower, putting on a brave face. But Renee saw the way he’d only ever sleep on his side of the bed, arms outstretched, always reaching into the emptiness of the other side. She saw how her mother’s suitcase was still packed up in what was supposed to be their bedroom, untouched.

And now, on top of all that, a delinquent child to deal with.

“Renee…” 

She was usually Monkey, or Ren. Never really Renee.

He asked, “What’s going on?”

Was it not a stupid question—what’s going on? Her mom was dead. For some reason—Renee hadn’t been able to figure it out yet. Her mom, who was a firm believer that everything happened for a reason, but… Renee couldn’t think of a single reason why it was necessary. Not in the four months she’d been mulling it over, twisting it around, turning it upside down, emptying it out, filling it back up again. 

She looked at her dad, who was so sad, so tired, so lost and lonely without his person… but still able to smile; to put himself back together every time the grief broke him apart. She looked at her brother, who was so sensitive, so homesick… but still able to make a friend—some boy named Elliott—and be able to blab nonstop about how he and this boy were trying out for the basketball team this week.

She looked at herself. All her life… all the things that had been said about her—

Renee didn’t understand how they did it—her dad, her brother. She was supposed to be the most like her mother. But she was the least. The least.

Just a delinquent child, right?

Renee strained against the title. But the truth was, there was anger bubbling inside of her. It had been living there, festering there, for months now. It had taken the place of what was once a deep, all-encompassing inquisitiveness, a desire to be the best version of herself she possibly could. It felt as though the principal had observed someone else; a ghost of who Renee once was. 

It felt as though Renee had woken up. From a dream, from a daze, she wasn’t sure. But she didn’t know how to be that person anymore. How to be that person without the intense hollowness that would surely accompany it.

“I’m not going to say you’re better than this,” her dad said, folding his arms, “you already know you are. Your principal told me on the phone that she thought the same thing, you know. And that you need a healthy way to get your feelings out. That woman didn't give you so much as an afternoon detention, Renee, so… what’s it going to be?”

Renee looked away from her dad, then. Everyone kept telling her all these things they thought she already knew, but she did it, didn’t she? If she was better, she wouldn’t have. “Is that my punishment?”

“You’re not a bad kid,” he said, anger bleeding into his tone—an emotion she almost never saw in him, “so stop trying to be. Be you. It might not look exactly like it once did. That’s okay. We, the three of us… we all have to try and find that—you’re not alone. I have my job to distract me. Your brother plays his games, goes to the court down the street to shoot hoops. You…” he trailed off, letting out a breath. Renee looked up again, caught him running a hand through his hair, mussing it back to its original state. “You’ve dropped all your hobbies, you don’t contact your friends from back home. You withdraw into yourself at the mere mention of your mother… so yes, that is your punishment, if you consider living your life to be such a thing.”

Tears welled in Renee’s eyes, but she wouldn’t let them fall. “I hate it here.”

There it was. The worst thing she could have said. As if there was a damn thing her dad could do about it. As if saying it out loud changed anything, or did anything, except make him feel bad; feel like a failure of a parent. As if it could erase the immense guilt she felt towards her father, working a job he was overqualified for, grieving his wife, her mother, on this strange planet. 

They were only here because of the assignment she accepted; because of the gamble she had taken. All she had to say was yes, and Renee's father, the man he was, would have made a home with her in hell itself, if it was what she wanted. 

If life really was an endless network of roads, carved by choices... Renee realised, all at once, that she'd found herself on the worst one. 

“That wasn’t fair,” she said, ashamed, trying to amend it, trying to retrace her steps. “I’m—“

But her train of thought was cut off by a sudden change in the pattern of the news anchor’s voice, once a droning noise in the background, that now had her ears perking up.

Oh, we—we have breaking news. It—we have just received word that the ongoing conflict between the IMC and the Frontier Militia on Typhon has concluded. Militia forces have withdrawn and retreated from the planet following a… some sort of cataclysmic beam that travelled… faster than light from Typhon itself… into the Militia-controlled planet of Harmony… we have confirmation that planet Harmony has been destroyed by whatever weapon this was. No possible chance of survivors.

The world seemed to stop then, as Renee and her dad both turned to face the radio, as she distantly heard the sound of her brother dropping his controller and running into the kitchen, as the news anchor continued…

I repeat: the Battle of Typhon has concluded with the total destruction of planet Harmony.

Chapter Text

PHASE ONE, PART II: THE TRIO

The day I first met you—properly met you, that is—it… heh. It wasn’t my finest moment, let’s just say that. 

Me and Jem were spending a lot of time together at this stage, mostly at my place, ‘cause it was a quieter area, and I had a basketball hoop in my backyard. My only impression of you at that point was that you were my best friend’s older sister, and you were, like, quiet and edgy and really cool. 

And kinda scary. I always used to think that you had superpowers, ‘cause you seemed to have this ability to, like, change the atmosphere of any room you walked into. Or control it, I dunno. Like—if you were happy, the room was happy. If you were mad… y’know.

6:40pm                                                                                             

Jab, jab, cross, uppercut. 

Jab, cross, hook. 

Rinse, repeat. 

A heavy beat thumped away in one ear, through an earbud. Her gloved fists coming into contact with the red punching bag in front of her pounded into the other ear. Renee needed to hear both—needed that music to keep her in the zone; needed the dull thud, the chain rattling as it suspended the bag to the ceiling, to keep her feeling it. 

One bead of sweat trickled down the bridge of her nose, clung for dear life on the tip. Another, another, another, rolling down her temples, soaking into her hair. One punch, and she saw a flash of the halls of the supercarrier from whence she came. Another punch, she saw an old family photo—but the image had been altered. Smiling faces; an arm supposed to be slung across her brother’s shoulders, a blurred gap between him and her father. A face missing. 

Punches came and images raced away in her mind. At first, when Renee started at this gym, the only image she saw was red. Fists flew, with no real purpose, no real clarity, until everything had been drained from within her. 

That first hit, that fight she’d gotten into, was only a drop in the ocean of the release she needed. 

For weeks, she beat the boxing bag to exhaustion, to failure. She dragged herself home. She waited until the next day. She dragged herself back, arms and core feeling like lead. After a while, the images began to surface. After a while, she noticed she could endure the workout for longer. After a while, she could feel—she could see, when she looked in the mirror—she was stronger. And Renee became addicted to the feeling. Obsessed with it.

And with everything that had happened… her maternal grandparents, her aunt, her uncles, her cousin, all living in Harmony when—

One hit, two, three, four. Another bead of sweat. Another image. All just images she had to bat away. 

But slowly, Renee began to feel human again. She started by listening to her teachers. Some of them were good, some of them were worth listening to. Then, she engaged with the lessons, she began raising her hand in class. She learned a thing or two. She remembered that math was her favourite.

She wrote to her old friends, but she hadn’t made any new ones. That was okay—Renee knew she was an acquired taste. She was quiet, she was blunt, she was hard to shock, hard to impress. Besides, she had her brother. Once upon a time, their lives had been so intertwined, she often forgot there was almost two years between them. But he was hanging out with his new friend, Elliott, a lot now. And that was hard to get used to.

Jem and Elliott sometimes walked part of the way home together, with Renee lagging behind. She didn’t really know him, and he’d probably find it weird that a fifteen-year-old would hang out with a couple of thirteen-year-old’s. He’d probably wonder why she didn’t have any friends of her own. Not that Renee cared what Elliott thought of her.

Even so. There was no more living life on the back foot. She might not know where she’s going anymore, and if she gave it enough thought, she couldn’t be certain she ever did. All her life, Renee had allowed the convictions of others to fuel her… but that was gone now. Somewhere along the way, she needed to find her own.

The song in Renee’s ear was cut off by her ringtone. She held her fists out, steadying the bag as it swung back her way, and she pressed her sweaty forehead against it. Hot, laboured breaths covered the material in front of her mouth with condensed air as she fished her phone out of her pocket.

Dad, with a little icon of his face underneath the word. She answered. It was almost seven, getting dark out—he wanted her home; wanted her to grab Jem, too.

Her brother usually spent his Saturdays at the Witt home. It took a while for their dad to let him walk there by himself, but really, it was a safe enough route. Turned out, Solace City wasn’t entirely the criminal haven that had been preceded by its reputation. Sure, a lot of shady dealings went on. Sure, there were plenty of dark corners you wouldn’t want to find yourself backed up into. The people could be gruff and unfriendly… but most of them just wanted to keep to themselves, turn a blind eye; live their life. 

Renee could respect that.

The sky had indeed begun to turn when Renee stepped outside of the gym. She pulled a jacket around her, despite the welcome chill in the air. The Witt’s was out of her way—they lived a little outside of the immediate city, where local businesses and standalone houses replaced skyscrapers and residential blocks. 

Renee pocketed her headphones, opting instead for ambient noise as she began her walk. The constancy of cars whizzing past her; the low, collective chatter of the city; the smell of various cuisines passing by restaurants, of bread and pastries passing by bakeries and cafes… she’d grown used to all of it. 

If she squinted, she could even see the charm of it—something she wouldn’t have been able to admit to herself three months ago. Maybe even less than that.

As she went, the buildings grew squatter, grew sparser apart. More trees, more green spaces, people walking their dogs, sitting on picnic blankets, soaking up the last of the day’s sun. Renee hadn’t really been this far outside the city before—she’d never had a reason to go to the Witt’s before now—so she kept an eye on the map leading her there.

Eventually, she found herself turning into a narrow lane. An old fence, turned green with algae, stretched across the left side between the street she’d come from and the street on the other end of the lane. It acted as a dam, holding back the trees and shrubs growing behind it, spilling over the top of the fence, and snaking between the gaps in the planks. Houses lined up in a row along the right side. Self-builds, all ranging in style, in upkeep. Renee ambled along, head turned, until her eyes landed on the house she was looking for.

Elliott Witt's home. 

A squat bungalow with a simple gabled roof, a wooden porch that wrapped around the left side of the house; stone flags leading up to the front door that seemed to have sunk deep into the ground over the years. More trees and shrubbery enclosed the perimeter of the property, and a gated wooden fence divided the front and back garden. The gate was open, and she could hear voices from the other side. 

Renee stood at the threshold between the lane and the first stone flag with her hands buried in her jacket pockets. She blew a breath upwards, disturbing locks of hair that had fallen over her eyes. For a moment, Renee just took it all in.

The house itself didn't look like the one she grew up in, but it struck her suddenly that this was the first time she'd been at a house since the night she left Typhon. It was the grass, the green, the clean air and the quiet, that reminded her of home. 

Renee missed it impossibly more as she made her way up the lawn towards the gate at the right side. 

The voices grew louder and clearer as she got closer. She could hear the laughter now—her brother's, and, what she'd come to know as Elliott's over the past few months. 

She could see now why the two of them hung out here more than at their apartment in the city.

Hands still in pockets, she gently nudged the slightly ajar gate wider with her shoulder. The grass gave way to a cement platform that narrowed and disappeared around the corner of the building. Beyond the platform, the rest of the garden was covered in patchy tufts of grass. Old, rusted bikes were propped up against the fence surrounding the garden, balls of various shapes and sizes were strewn about. The evening sky, now a deep slate, cast shadows across the lawn.

It was peaceful, cosy, familiar. It was a far cry from her high-rise apartment building in the middle of Solace City.

A peace that was suddenly shattered by a basketball to the face as she rounded the corner.

The unexpected impact sent Renee backwards, into some old, rotting planks of wood propped up against the back wall of the house. She lost her footing and fell, and a plank of wood came down with her, breaking its fall on the top of her head before clattering to the ground behind her.

Renee cried out, a hand coming up to her crown as she looked up, eyes scanning for the offender. Her eyes caught Jem’s first—she could instantly tell that, beneath the shock, he wanted so badly to laugh, and the hand over his mouth did a poor job of suppressing it.

Then, she looked to Elliott, the clear culprit, judging by the way his cheeks and the tips of his ears had turned a deep pink. 

“Shit—“ Elliott’s voice came out as more of a squeak. She hadn’t really spoke two words to the boy the entire time he’d been friends with Jem, and this was how they officially break the ice? “Sorry, Renee! Sorry. Sorry. Are—“ he took a few steps forward, hesitated, then stumbled forward again. Unsure of himself, of what to do, what to say. “Are you okay?”

Renee, meanwhile, continued rubbing her head gingerly, grunting in pain. She glanced over her shoulder and—yep. It was the flat head of a small nail sticking out of the wooden board that had struck her. Luckily, her fingers didn’t come away bloody when she examined them. 

Lucky for Elliott.

“It’s fine.” Renee hoped she injected enough contempt in her voice to let him know it was anything but. She carefully found her feet again, her brow low over her eyes as she looked at him. Elliott seemed to visibly gulp. “Just—dad wants us home, Jem.”

By now, Jem’s expression had sobered up. He opened his mouth to say something, but was cut off by the back door flying open. A woman with dirty blonde hair poked her head out, face incredulous, as she asked, “Is everything okay, boys?”

Great, now Elliott’s mother was involved in the spectacle.

At first, neither Renee, Jem, or Elliott said a word. Renee didn’t want to announce her presence. Jem probably didn’t want to rat out his friend to his mom. And Elliott? 

Probably didn’t want to rat himself out.
 
Her head turned swiftly to the side, in Renee’s direction. She gave Renee a once over, eyes flitting between her, the heap of fallen wooden planks behind her, the ball that had rolled away…

And that’s how Renee ended up in the Witt’s kitchen, with her head cradled between the hands of Elliott’s mother.

“I can see where the nail hit you,” she commented, a thumb brushing over the spot. Her name was Evelyn, Renee learned. Evelyn had ushered her inside, despite Renee’s protests, not wanting to send her home without checking her over. “But it’s not bleeding. Might bruise though… you’re sure you don’t have any headache? Nausea? Dizziness?”

“I’m sure.” It was all Renee could say. This close, her eyes fixed on one of the buttons of Evelyn’s cardigan, refusing to wander anywhere else. Not at the gentle hands either side of her head, not up into Evelyn’s face. It wasn’t discomfort—that would have been too easy, wouldn’t it? 

It looked like discomfort. It felt like discomfort.

But it cut a little deeper than that.

“That silly boy. I’m sorry about him,” Evelyn finally let go of her, and Renee took a too-hasty step backwards.

“It’s okay, he didn’t mean it.” Truthfully, Renee could sucker-punch him right now, but she couldn’t exactly say that to the guy’s mom.

But… that wasn’t so fair on Elliott. He really did look embarrassed. Mortified, even. He could have laughed, could have played it off like it was all a big joke, and Renee was the poor soul at the butt of it. But he didn’t. There was no bravado on that face; no malice.

No mask. Just… whoever Elliott was.

“Ellie has a heart of gold, but he can be a little clumsy.” She paused to let out a little laugh. “I always try to remember the heart of gold part when he does something like this.”

What a mommy’s boy. 

Even so, Renee could respect the sentiment. And… she could respect her brother’s choice in a friend. Neither of them had many back home. Jem was the type of kid who was friends with everyone, who got along with everyone, but… they were all surface-level friendships, and he lived too far away from the other kids to see them much outside of school. Distance was an issue for Renee, too, but she did have a small circle of close friends. 

Once upon a time.

“Thanks for taking a look,” she said, shoving her hands back into her pockets, continuing to take small steps backwards. The urge to escape Evelyn’s presence was strong, stronger than it really ought to be. “Me and Jem really have to get home now, though.”

A warm smile took over Evelyn’s face. “It’s nothing, honey. Tell your dad it’s my fault you were home late.”

Renee let out a long breath as she and Jem descended the stone flags at the front of the house together a moment later. Her internal temperature had long-since returned to normal, and the chill in the air bit a little stronger into her skin as she pushed closed fists deeper inside her jacket pockets, wrapping it tighter around herself.

For a moment, they walked in silence. He’d gotten taller these past few months. They were almost the same height, which was a strange cocktail of baffling and infuriating. But really, Renee knew she was fated to be the shortest in the family—it was only a matter of time.

And thank god he’d been getting his hair cut. That thick, wavy mop on his head was just awful.

“You good?”

Renee hummed in response. He could have been asking about her head, or about her encounter with Elliott’s mother, or—or anything, really. Part of her wished he’d just laugh at her expense, that she got wiped out by that ball to the face. He was too perceptive for a boy who’d just entered his teen years. Too in-tune with his older sister. 

It was supposed to be the other way around—and it was, but…

“I’m good.” 

Maybe he’d believe her if she lied to him. 

“You should come hang out with us next time.”

Renee shook her head to herself at the suggestion, looking down, eyes jumping to each incoming crack in the pavement. It would be just like old times: Renee and Jem, the package-deal siblings. It all felt like a lifetime ago. Long enough that Renee couldn’t quite fathom playing ball with her brother and Elliott, standing in his backyard, shooting the breeze with his mom; becoming a regular at the Witt home. And maybe Elliott really was a nice boy, heart of gold and all that. Maybe they could be friends, if she gave him a chance.

But Jem would have noticed by now, surely, that the sister he left Typhon with was not the sister he walked next to now. Or maybe he hadn’t. Maybe he couldn’t.

“Maybe, yeah.”

“We don’t just play basketball, you know. Elliott’s older brother has a console. We play video games, like, a lot of the stuff you and me used to play…”

One corner of Renee’s mouth quirked upwards. It couldn’t hurt to indulge him, even if she happened to be busy every time Jem and Elliott were supposed to hang out. “Oh yeah?”

“He’s really cool. I thought he had lots of friends when I first met him. It seemed that way, but… well, it doesn’t really matter. You’d like him.”

“He threw a basketball at my face.”

Jem laughed, swatting Renee on the arm. “It was an accident! Give him a break. He’s just a little…”

“Clumsy?” Renee finished for him, repeating what Evelyn said about her son. “I’ve heard. I’ve experienced it firsthand, too. Got the bump to prove it.”

Even Renee could admit that Jem’s sales pitch of his own friend to Renee was… endearing, amusing, something along those lines. He grinned. “Whatever. I just figured… well—“

Renee rolled her eyes. “Yes?”

“Haven’t seen you make any friends, is all,” Jem mumbled, shrugged, as if he was saying something he shouldn’t. As if Renee hadn’t seen it coming.

“That obvious?” It was a rhetorical question; Jem seemed to pick up on that. Renee sighed. “You don’t have to manage my social life, you know that, right?”

“I know, just—“

“I’m—look,” they stopped at a crosswalk, and cars raced by in either direction as they turned to face one another. “I’m fine. I know I’ve been distant and different, but I’m doing a lot better. If friends were what I needed, I’d go looking for them. You don’t have to look out for me, okay?”

In her periphery, a light turned from green, to amber, to red. The cars came to an impatient, foot-tapping stop either side of the crosswalk. Renee turned away from her brother and strode into the road while she could. He scampered after her.

Silence again, for the next block or so. But Jem always had to have the last word. This time, she might even let him have it.

“I can look out for you as much as I like,” he said, bumping his shoulder against hers.

And there it was.

Renee said nothing in return. The dying sun peaked over a low building at the other end of the street, washing in gold everything in its path. As Renee and Jem walked home through the sunset, all she did was smile a little to herself, shaking her head as she bumped him back.

Chapter Text

So, when I was a kid… well, it’s probably obvious by now that I was kind of a loser. 

I mean, Jem was my only friend. We weren’t rich or anything, and I always wore hand-me-downs from my brothers. And I was different, I guess. I always had this stutter, and I tend to ramble at the worst times. And I… well, I was picked on a little. 

I never told anyone… didn’t want my brothers to find out, ‘cause they would’ve kicked ass and then it probably would’ve got worse. Besides, Roger had just joined the Frontier Corps, and Rick and Elon weren’t far behind him. They didn’t have time to deal with my problems, too.

Things were better with Jem around, though. I was left alone a lot more. But, uh… but one day he was out sick.
 

3:52pm                                                                                                

All day, Elliott couldn’t shake the feeling he was being followed. 

Even at the ripe age of fourteen, he was no stranger to a bad day. He was no stranger to checking the mailbox outside his house, waiting for something from his dad—a postcard, a weird knickknack, anything—or checking their text messages, waiting for the status of Elliott’s last correspondence to change from delivered to read. He was no stranger to saying the wrong thing, at the wrong time. He was no stranger to making a fool of himself—whether realising he’d done just that or not; no stranger to spending hours upon hours, even days, mulling things over in his head, performing mental do-overs, spiralling into looping thought-patterns, beating himself up over countless mishaps. 

He was no stranger to spending days at school checking over his shoulder, making sure the wrong crowd didn’t catch him on his own. Which hadn’t been the case for over a year now, because… for possibly the first time in Elliott’s life, he had a friend. A real friend—one who seemed to actually like him, who wanted to spend time with him; get to know him. 

Jem Blasey. The boy who made even the thought of school more bearable.

The boy who happened to be out sick today.

It was as if they—that crowd—it was as if they knew. From the moment Elliott set foot into the building that morning, he felt like a moving target. That they were a few years older than him was his saving grace, so… he kept his head down from classroom to classroom. He spent his lunch break in a bathroom stall. It could have been extreme paranoia, but Elliott wasn’t taking any chances.

Paranoia or not, it paid off. The final bell rung, ending a day that was without incident. Elliott had to stop himself from running out the doors to freedom, to safety. He walked, hands wrapped tightly around the straps of his backpack, ever-forward to the exit, the afternoon sun’s rays shining through the glass double-doors, like a cliched light at the end of a dark, dark tunnel. The knot in his stomach hung on tight, waiting for Elliott to reach that end before beginning to unfurl itself within him.

Finally, Elliott’s hands pressed against the warm glass, pushing the door open. He even held it for a kid a few steps behind him, who nodded their gratitude his way. Then, the sun was in his face, the birds were singing their midday song, and the knot loosened just that tiny bit—

“Hey, it’s Luh-luh- Little Witt.”

Fuck.

Elliott turned slowly on the spot. Three older kids, leaning lazily with their shoulders against the school’s brickwork, a short way’s away, half hidden behind a tall crop of bushes. The ringleader, that mean, greasy blond guy, and his henchmen either side of him.

“Where’s your friend today, Little Witt?” Asked Greasy, pushing himself off the wall. “Didn’t see him around.”

Here was precisely the problem: if Elliott stuttered in his answer, it would be fuel to the fire. If he didn’t, Greasy would only mockingly praise him for getting through the sentence.  Elliott was a fun, easy target, and they both knew it. 

“Just… out sick,” Elliott said, his hands clasping the straps tighter as he went to turn around. He needed, desperately, to be more out in the open. 

“Woah, where you going? I’m just having a friendly chat.”

“I just… I need to—I need to get home, I—”

The other two kids took a step forward, and Elliott froze as Greasy continued. “Y’know, that freak Typhonian friend of yours seems to be related to the freak Typhonian girl in my grade. She got me a week’s worth of detentions. She bumped into me; socked me in the face. Do you think that’s fair, Little Witt?”

 Elliott found himself shrugging and shaking his head. Jem told him all about that, and Elliott remembered feeling giddy at the thought of Greasy getting a taste of his own medicine. But now… “I-I… I dunno—I…”

Greasy laughed. “There’s the stutters! C’mere,” he beckoned Elliott closer with a wave of his hand. Elliott didn’t move.

“Come here.”

The knot, having wound back to its original tightness, strained even further in the pit of his stomach. He shuffled forward. “C’mon, please j-just leave me alone,”

“I ought to get her little brother for what she did, but y’know what?” He smiled darkly at Elliott, “You’ll do.”

Elliott’s heart pounded as he slowly moved towards them. Greasy had never actually hit him before—just pushed him around, called him names, things like that. And that whole thing with Jem’s sister happened, like, ages ago, why was this dude holding such a grudge?

Or maybe, it was just any excuse to have a little fun.

He must have been moving too slowly, because the henchmen lunged forward and each grabbed one of Elliott’s shoulders, before shoving him closer to Greasy. Greasy, having a good few inches on him, lay a not-so-kindly hand on Elliott’s shoulder, now that he was close enough. Elliott balled his fists by his sides, not equipped to fight back, but willing to—if it came to it. 

Or… was he? He wasn’t sure, but—

“Lay one hand on him, I dare you.”

Greasy looked up, and Elliott twisted in place to get a look behind him. There stood Renee Blasey, a few feet away, her expression so stormy she could have brought grey clouds over the blue, blue sky. 

Had she really come to Elliott’s rescue?

“You,” in one motion, Greasy sent Elliott to the ground with that same hand gripping his shoulder, before advancing on Renee. “Either you fuck off, or finish what you started last time.” 

Elliott scrambled on the ground, turning to face the scene unfolding before him. Renee looked completely unfazed, despite the three of them surrounding her. 

He should get up—he should help, he should fight…

“You really wanna get into it?” she asked, huffing, “Three against one? I knew you were a spineless coward. Of course you pick on someone younger and smaller than you, and skulk around in groups while you do it.” She dropped her bag to the ground, began rolling up her sleeves. “Alright then. Let’s get into it.”

For an agonising moment, Renee and Greasy just stared each other down, neither moving. Elliott waited, his breath in his throat, for that first fist to fly, but to his surprise…

“Y’know what,” Greasy laughed, like the whole thing was oh-so funny, like it was beneath him. “You’re not worth the trouble. Neither of you.” With a tilt of his chin, he signalled for the henchmen to follow him, and they, as Renee so aptly put it, skulked off. Greasy ensured to bump into Renee’s side as he moved past her, but she made a show of barely even flinching at the contact.

Somewhere along the way, Elliott’s jaw fell to his lap. Badass.

Renee slung her bag back over her shoulders once more, shaking her head in… Elliott couldn’t tell if it was relief, exasperation, annoyance, or all of the above. She stepped over to him and held a hand out. “Come on, I’ll walk home with you, in case they get any ideas.”

Elliott’s eyes darted between the hand in front of his face, and up to Renee. It struck him, not for the first time, just how alike she and Jem were. Eyes the same shade of blue, striking against a pale face and a near-black head of hair. Somehow, though, Renee’s hair was even darker. 

“Y-you don’t have to—“

Her fingers flexed in place. “I didn’t ask if I had to.”

Elliott swallowed, took her hand, and Renee helped him off the ground. Effortlessly, too. He had to wonder how she would have fared on her own against the other three kids. The way Greasy had flung him to the side like a piece of lint stuck to him… the way Renee picked him up—the way she looked so fearless as she faced them… Elliott had never been that strong, that brave. He didn’t know if he ever could.

Not like Greasy. Fuck Greasy. Like Renee. Like his brothers. Like his mom.

Their walk began in silence. Elliott, despite himself, scrambled for a way to fill it. Since fumbling their first real encounter together—fumbling it hard—Elliott had been unsure of how to approach her. They saw each other here and there: if he was at the Blasey’s apartment; if she was picking Jem up from his house; if the three of them were leaving school at the same time… but she always seemed uninterested in engaging with them. 

With him.

But… she mustn’t hate him, right? Or she wouldn’t have come to his rescue. Or she wouldn’t have put her neck on the line—been willing to face three bullies on her own for him. Even if she already had beef with them—it wasn’t about that. It was about saving him. She said… she said don’t touch him.

And they didn’t.

“What’d you do to piss that dude off?”

Elliott wasn’t expecting Renee to say anything without prompting. “Um—“ well… the answer was nothing. Today, at least. But, really, Elliott had been the subject of their torment for a couple of years now. “Greasy? He’s the meanest kid in school. We went to the same middle school, too, so, uh…” he shrugged, “I dunno. He’s always had it out for me.”

In his periphery, Elliott saw her raise an eyebrow. “Greasy?”

“Yeah,” he smiled sheepishly, “I don’t know his name. Just that he, like, never washes his hair. Or, maybe he does, and he doesn’t know what he’s doing—like, maybe he’s using conditioner instead of shampoo? Or, uh…” Elliott winced at himself, before forcefully trailing off. Sometimes, his words were a train leaving the station as he ran futilely after them. 

“Right. And has Greasy… picked on you and Jem before?”

If Renee found his rambling annoying, she didn’t let on. “N-no. Not Jem, anyway. That was my first run-in with him since I met Jem last year. I dunno why, but he backed off. I…”

“He seems to target people who don't have any backup. Like I said: coward.”

That made sense, he supposed. By that logic, it would mean that Renee was the exact opposite of a coward. It must be why Greasy thought better of throwing down against her—she called him out for what he was. Besides, he usually got off on the fear he caused his victims, but Renee showed none. It probably threw him off, made him second-guess the whole thing.

“Why did you?”

Elliott wasn’t sure why he was asking, or even if he should. But he did anyway.

“Why did I…?”

He couldn’t say for certain what he thought of Renee before now. All he knew was that she was the very last person he expected to see in his corner—his best friend’s older sister, who surely hated his guts. An unreadable book, a lone-wolf. He’d be lying if he said he didn’t want to get to the bottom of it. 

“Help me… why’d you help me back there?”

A long pause. There couldn’t have been an obvious answer—Renee was no school vigilante. She might have gotten into a fight with Greasy before, but she didn’t start it—Elliott knew that much. He couldn’t dream up one reason why Renee would do what she did.

Maybe she had a hard time coming up with one, too.

“It was a problem I could solve. Has… no one else stood up for you before?”

Oh. That was it, wasn’t it? Glaring at Elliott, right in the face. Elliott usually kept his problems to himself—not even Jem knew that Elliott had been bullied in the past. It wasn’t what he wanted to focus on, to think about. Didn’t want the pity, or… or worse. For Jem to see through him, realise he was a loser; realise Elliott wasn’t worth his time.

And now, Renee had seen him in that way. 

“People mostly mind their own business,” he said with a shrug, “and… I thought you hated me.”

Renee shook her head at that. “I don’t hate you, Elliott. I don’t even know you.”

“Well…” he adjusted his grip on the backpack. He’d been holding it, like a lifeline, since they started walking. “Don’t get to know me then, or… or you might change your mind.”

Renee didn’t laugh, but Elliott swore he saw a flash of amusement in her expression—her eyes lighting up, just a tiny bit; crinkling a little in the corners. 

Maybe, one day, he could get a real laugh out of her.

“Try me.”

There was still one good stretch left in the walk home. Elliott took the challenge to heart; suggested twenty questions—Renee expressed that she thought it was corny, but she didn’t say no, so... 

He steered clear of family subjects. Jem told him that their mom’s passing hit Renee especially hard, that she didn’t even like to talk about her, or be reminded of her. It wasn’t like that for Jem, though—he seemed to find comfort in sharing memories; making comparisons between how Elliott’s mom acts and reacts to how Violet would have in a given situation. Even so, he learned that Renee’s favourite colour was purple—any purple, it didn’t matter the shade. Her favourite subject at school was physics, mathematics, anything analytical, anything with numbers. Her favourite food was… those sour apple rings.

Surprising.

There were other things, Elliott learned, between the lines. She used her words sparingly, carefully, thoughtfully. Unlike himself, who couldn’t ever seem to shut up. Getting information out of her—her favourite colour, favourite food, favourite subject—it seemed to pain her to let go of it, like she wanted to keep even the most trivial things about herself, to herself.

And… she asked him questions back—mostly the same questions in return. His favourite colour was yellow. His favourite subject was also math. His favourite food was the pork chops his mom always made. The recipe had been in his family for generations, and one day, he’d be just as good at making them. 

Elliott’s next question, however, was neither trivial nor supposed to have been said out loud. It was something he’d been wondering since she found him earlier, something he’d been churning over in his mind, something that he’d blurted out, without intending to.

He asked, “how’d you get so brave?”

Stupid. 

Heat flooded his cheeks as soon as the question escaped him. Her mouth twisted into a knot as she hummed in consideration. “Brave?”

“Yeah, well—I mean… I saw the way you looked at those guys earlier… you didn’t—you didn’t seem to care that you were outmatched.” Elliott was powerless to stop the words from tumbling out of his mouth. “It wouldn’t have been easy to beat them all on your own, you must’ve known that…”

Renee shrugged. “I know.”

Elliott watched her, unblinking, begging with his eyes for her to elaborate.

“I’d give it a good try, though.”

“Why?”

“Because…” the word came out of her as a heavy sigh. “I couldn’t stand there and do nothing. That’s not… how I want to live.”

They were almost at the lane. It seemed obvious, at least to Elliott, that Renee had more than fulfilled her due diligence—nobody had followed them this far out of the city. She could have turned around at any point, decided Elliott was safe enough to complete the journey on his own. But here she still was, walking alongside him.

Enigma. That’s a word his mom used a lot, for anything she didn’t quite understand. But… she was the smartest person Elliott knew, and she always figured it out, no matter what it was.

At this moment in time, Renee seemed a lot like an enigma to Elliott. Maybe it was because she saved his hide, maybe it was because he still didn’t really know why. But Elliott… sort of wanted to figure it out—how she still gave him the time of day, even if they appeared to be polar-opposites.

“So… are we friends?”

Another question flying out the gates without Elliott’s say-so. He must have caught Renee off-guard just enough, because this time, she did laugh. Just a little.

But still. Score.

“Well, you know too much now. So, either we’re friends, or I’m gonna have to kill you.”

Elliott refrained from asking whether or not that was a joke. If anyone was capable of both the former and the latter, all at once, it was her. Best not to test it.

He chuckled a little, a hand coming to the back of his neck. “How about just the friends one?”

They came to a stop outside Elliott’s house. He turned to face her, his back to the entryway, as he waited for an answer. After all, with Renee, it definitely wasn’t a given. Nothing was.

He found himself wanting it to be, though.

There was a trace of a smile on her lips, slipping past the defenses, infiltrating her face. A real laugh; a real smile. Those were Elliott’s new goals, he decided.

“Sure. We can go with the friends one.”

Chapter Text

I dunno if you really set out to be friends with me. Like, originally. But you, me, and Jem sort of became a trio. We’d play video games after school, watch movies, you’d come over to mine and I’d come over to yours. You got to know my mom, and I got to know your dad. Which was cool, ‘cause those were the parents we were both missing, I guess. 

I got to, kinda, watch you come out of your shell. You were always quiet and, uh, reserved, but… spend enough time with you and you’ll see how much more to you there is. Y’know, like, you’re fun, you’re a good listener. But it was a slow process, I think. 

You and me started to get real close after that Christmas, though. 

 5:03pm                                                                              

“Hey.”

From her cross-legged perch on the bed, Renee dragged her eyes from her tablet screen up towards her—well, hers and her brother’s—bedroom door. Jem’s body was half-hidden behind it, and he had a look on his face. That look. The one where he wanted something from her—with huge, unblinking eyes, and a weird, toothless smile stretching across his face.

Renee arched an eyebrow upwards. “Hello...” 

He turned his head just slightly, eyes going to his shoulder, as if double-checking no one was behind him. Satisfied that the coast was clear, he asked, “You busy?”

It was five in the evening, December the 24th, and Renee was studying for a physics test promised to come in the new year by her teacher. Of course she was busy.

“What do you want, James.”

Jem’s mouth went agape. “Do not government-name me, Renee.” Renee scrunched her nose up at the name—he never called her that, either. She liked her own name, but Jem hated his. Only teachers ever called him James, but even they would eventually switch to his preferred nickname when they realised that’s what everyone else was calling him. “I have news.”

Renee set her tablet aside, folded her arms, gave him her best get on with it look. 

His weird grin returned. “Elliott’s on his way.”

“That’s news?”

Jem’s eyes widened comically, and he made a show of checking behind him again, of speaking out the side of his mouth, toned hushed and garbled, when he turned back to Renee. “We’re meeting him on the roof.”

“Are we?” Renee asked, mimicking him.

“Mm-hmm. And we’re keeping it on the down-low.”

“Because…?”

A desperate sort of exasperation mingled with the rest of Jem’s strange expression. “You’ll see. Just—c’mon, will you?”

Renee sighed as she began to shuffle off her bed. There wasn’t anyone else in the entire world that could convince Renee to go up to that freezing cold roof at night, on Christmas Eve, with little information as to why. She knew it, he knew it, and nothing could be done about it. “This better be good.”

Their apartment on Solace was small, compared to her old house. Together, they slip out of their room and are immediately in the living room. To the right of their bedroom is their dad’s, whose en-suite was the place’s only bathroom. From here, Renee could see right into the kitchen adjoining the other side of the living room, where her dad was milling about, undoubtedly preparing for the big dinner tomorrow.

Jem nudged her, and Renee looked up—just a little, just enough to notice she was doing so, instead of looking down on her brother, like she had been doing their whole lives until recently—to see him place a dramatic finger over his lips, before beckoning her to follow him to the rack of coats by the front door. As if their father wouldn’t eventually realise that the house was uncharacteristically quiet and devoid of his two teenage children.

But, again, Renee played along; humoured him. She didn’t quite understand the secrecy or the mystery, but… whatever. 

She’d gotten one arm into her coat when Jem’s bubble was burst, as it was always going to be. She saw her dad peering over at them from the kitchen archway, mixing bowl and wooden spoon in hand.

“And… where are we going?”

“Roof,” Renee said coolly. Next to her, Jem’s face went white as a sheet. This time, it was her turn to nudge him, her elbow digging in a little harder into his arm than his had with hers. A silent shut up.

Consideration flashed across her father’s face, before he shrugged. “Alright. Don’t fall over the edge.”

They were halfway down the hall outside their apartment before Jem burst out laughing. “That was a close one!”

Renee shook her head in amusement. “Yeah, ‘cause you almost blew it, idiot. Why are you being so weird about this?”

“You’ll see,” he said again, as they passed the elevator. The thing was perpetually broken, but he jammed his thumb into the button anyway, just in case. They made it to the stairwell at the end of the hallway, and began the short climb to the roof, just past the ninth and final floor. The draft became gradually stronger as they neared, and Renee shivered as she dug her hands into the deep pockets of her coat, using the side of her body to press the push-bar across the black metal door. 

It was a still, cold night. The city lights normally obscured the stars, but she could see a few tonight. Elliott was already on the other side, waiting for them, sitting on the ground near the edge. At the sound of the roof’s door closing behind them, Elliott looked up, beaming when he saw them. Renee immediately saw something bulging under his coat.

This was a setup.

“Merry Christmas!” Elliott singsonged.

“Elliott,” she said, calmly, slowing her stride as she and Jem drew closer. “What the hell is in your jacket?”

Elliott’s grin fell crooked. Even though they were on the roof, where absolutely no one could see them, he leaned over, closer to the edge, eyes warily scanning the street below them before pulling out a half-empty bottle of dark liquor. “Spiced rum,” he told her, fingers already moving to unscrew the cap, “you ever have any?”

Jem sank down next to Elliott, leaving Renee standing on her own. “Uh… no?” Her voice was incredulous. “Where did you get…” she shook her head, then, knowing where he got it—that bar his family owned, The Paradise Lounge. “Why?”

He set the cap down on the cement and began to carefully pour some of the rum into it. “It’s Christmas Eve."

Ah, yes. Perfectly rational explanation. “So…?”

“So let loose, Ren!” he exclaimed, before cursing under his breath when he overfilled the cap, a small pool of liquid staining the ground. “You wanna go first?”

She regarded the capful of rum with uncertainty. In Solace, sixteen was considered an acceptable age to start drinking, but… admittedly, alcohol had never even crossed her mind before now. Plus, there was Elliott and Jem, a whole two years younger, looking up at her expectantly. She couldn’t just… chicken out.

Her dad would kill her.

“Alright,” she finally said, moving to sit, already feeling the guilt settle in her chest. The cement was frigid, seeping immediately through the fabric of her sweatpants and into her skin. Nights on Typhon were worse, though. Going out unnecessarily—especially during the colder months—could be dangerous. 

In the corner of her eye, she saw Elliott’s grin grow bigger. He pushed the cap a little her way, the liquid curving like a bubble at the edges and jiggling with the movement. She picked it up carefully, slowly bringing it to her lips. She’d tasted wine as a kid and hated it—it was like battery acid. But she’d always heard that liquor like this burned, and as she took that sip… 

Woof.

Jem and Elliott laughed at her when her face screwed up. It burned, alright, with a warm, spicy sweetness that hardly made up for it. She didn’t know if she could finish the whole thing, but Elliott egged her on. “C’mon, all in one go!”

She rolled her eyes, but did so, and—god. Her chest pulsed with a warmth she’d never felt before as it went down, and she grunted, wiping her mouth on the back of her hand. “Jesus Christ,” her voice was hoarse as she shook her head, “you’ve had this before, Elliott?”

“Just once, like, a little sip,” he said, already moving to refill the cap. “And, uh… d-don’t tell my ma that we did this. I might have snagged this from the bar while nobody was looking.”

He managed not to overfill it this time, and pushed it Jem’s way. Jem, despite his prior confidence, had clearly never had any before, either, judging by the way his eyes went to Renee’s for approval. Whether he meant for them to or not, she wasn’t sure. 

Renee nodded at the cap on the ground, sealing her title as the cool older sister. Permission granted.

Unlike her, Jem took the cap and downed it in one motion. His hand moved so quickly that it spilled a little over the edge and onto his coat, dripping down the waterproof material. Like her, Jem’s face twisted into a knot. While he and Elliott laughed, Renee only huffed a little in amusement. Then, it was Elliott’s turn. His shot-face wasn’t so bad.

A few rounds later, Renee found the cold wasn’t so unbearable anymore, and the taste of the alcohol was more sweet than bitter as she got used to it. She didn’t know how it all worked—how long it should take to get tipsy, to get drunk, but, at this stage, she realised the term let loose was an apt one. At some point, the laughs tumbled more freely from her, she didn’t think so hard about her choice of words, but she was still in control of them. That was good. She didn’t want to venture past that point, not really.

“We should play a game!” Jem said, his teeth lingering a little on the sh sound. She definitely didn’t want to haul a drunken fourteen-year-old Jem home to their father, so she grabbed the bottle and moved it out of reach. For now. 

She asked, “What game?”

“Oh, there’s… uh—we could play truth or dare?” Elliott suggested.

“Never played,” she said.

“What?” Elliott gasped, “no way! How’ve you never played?”

“Never anyone to play with.”

“Okay, okay, okay,” he said, adjusting his position on the ground, drawing his knees up close to his chest. “We’re gonna play now, then,” he looked right at her, with his head of messy curls obscuring half his face. “Truth or dare?”

Renee blew out a breath. Time to find out just how drunk she really was. “Dare.”

Elliott hummed, brushing his thumb thoughtfully against his chin. Then, his face lit up. “Dare you to walk as close to the edge as possible,” he said, gesturing with a tilt of his head towards the edge of the roof, “for five seconds.”

Renee considered for a second, before nodding and standing. The buzz of alcohol washed over her as she did, and she giggled a little before taking a few steps over. They were probably over a hundred feet above the street below, and she peered over the edge at Ferril Square, which was alight with pubs and bars and clubs, all celebrating Christmas in their own way. There was a little ledge around the perimeter of the roof, and Renee smirked to herself as she climbed up on it. It was narrow enough that she had to spread her arms to steady herself, and she began walking carefully as Jem and Elliott counted up to five, anxiety bleeding into their voices at the sight of her.

She stepped off the ledge back to safety once they finished counting, and Jem and Elliott applauded her. “I didn’t think you’d actually do it!” Elliott said.

“I’m not really afraid of heights,” she shrugged, sitting back down. Despite her words, exhilaration coursed through her veins. 

“Are you afraid of anything?” Elliott asked.

“Hmm,” she said, not looking at him, instead narrowing her eyes at Jem, “not your turn to ask me anything yet. Truth or dare?”

“Truth.”

Renee’s gaze briefly flicked upwards, to the stars, as she considered what she wanted to ask her brother. It wasn’t often they found themselves in this position, at one another’s mercy. She could ask him anything. 

He could do the same.

“Got any crushes at school? Or… ever had a crush?”

Jem reddened, then folded his arms across his chest. “That’s two questions!”

“Okay,” she said, laughing a little, “the second one.”

For all their closeness growing up, this particular hand was one that Jem always played close to his chest. He was only fourteen, but sometimes kids had their crush of the week, right? Not that he had to—Renee was just… curious. 

“Um…” Jem shrugged, tilted his head from side-to-side, shrugged again. He frowned in what looked like genuine consideration of Renee’s question. “I dunno. Maybe? I never really thought about it.”

“Alright,” she said, unsure if he was really telling the truth or not. There could be nothing more to it than that; there could be a lot more to it than that, but Jem wasn’t about to offer anything more. “Cool. Your turn.”

She expected Jem to turn to Elliott, but he kept his eyes on her. “You. T or D?”

Renee leaned backwards a little, taken aback. This was a challenge, she could see it on his face. “Truth.”

“Great,” Jem smirked at her, “is it true you had a girlfriend back home?”

Though Renee was looking at her brother, she could see that Elliott’s head darted between the two of them, sensing a sibling brawl on the horizon. This time, it was Renee’s turn to blush. What a prick. 

“What are you talking about?” 

“You know what I’m talking about! That girl, uh… I forget her name. But you know!”

Renee’s mouth pressed into a thin line. She didn’t want to sound defensive in her answer, but it was hard not to, with the question coming at her in such an accusatory way. Like Jem already knew the answer before even asking. “We weren’t dating. I just—we sat together at lunch.”

Half a truth. The other half, she couldn’t quite pinpoint herself. Not that she’d never be able to.

“You had a crush on her, though?”

“That’s more than one question,” she said, before turning to Elliott. “Truth or dare?”

Elliott visibly swallowed as he bit back a giggle. “Uh—truth.”

“Have—“ Renee paused, considering if she should even ask. They’d only really been friends a couple of months, but they got along better than she ever expected them to. Elliott Witt wasn’t normally her preferred genre of friend—a little younger, into different things, clumsy with his limbs and his words—but he could rouse a laugh from her if he tried hard enough, or… or didn’t even try at all. He was eager to be included and to include her. The more she learned about him, the more she realised he’d been dealt somewhat of a shitty hand in life, despite that heart of gold.

Jem was right about their potential as friends. Evelyn was right about his character.

And Elliott? He really was just Elliott.

 She supposed, under any other circumstances that didn’t involve alcohol, she could have managed to switch gears, but, in keeping with the current theme of the game… “Have you ever had a crush?”

Elliott shrugged. “Yeah. ‘Course.”

And that was all he said.

They went on a few more rounds. Elliott tried and failed to do a cartwheel. Jem beatboxed a few bars of his favourite song. Renee, begrudgingly, revealed the name of the aforementioned girl back home. That got a teasing grin from Jem, and an oddly fascinated look from Elliott. The bottle found its way back to the centre of the little circle they were sitting in, while hands reached in for a few more swigs, the bottle cap long forgotten.

At some point, it was Renee’s turn again, and she had her mind set on revenge for her brother’s earlier transgressions. “Jem.”

“Dare,” he said, his smile somewhere between lazy and confident.

“Dare you to kiss Elliott.”

Renee almost regretted it as soon as it left her mouth, when the two boys froze in place. But no—she was committing. 

“For real?” asked Jem.

Renee nodded.

But just as Jem could dish out a challenge, so could he take one. And he was never one to back down from it. The prior humour and confidence vanished from his expression, but it nonetheless steeled as he turned to Elliott. “Fine. I’m down if you’re down.”

Elliott cleared his throat, pushing himself up off his hands that he was leaning back on. Clearly unsure, clearly putting on a brave face, as he hesitantly nodded. “S-sure.”

They scooted closer to each other, leaned in slowly, closed their eyes. Their lips pressed together, just for a second, before they pulled away, both laughing it off immediately and wiping their mouths.

Renee gave a slow clap. “Bravo, boys.”

“That was so weird,” Jem said with a shake of his head. “Anyway. Elliott.”

Avoiding Jem’s gaze, Elliott chuckled a little awkwardly as he chose to take a dare. 

But just as Jem could take a challenge, so could he dish them out. He rubbed his hands together, just like an evil villain, his smirk speaking volumes.

“I dare you to kiss Renee.”

march 31, 2717

It was rare that Renee ever got the house to herself—especially on a Saturday. The only difference, really, was that she sat at the sofa instead of on her bed, with her legs folded in on one another. Textbooks, papers, her tablet, study notes, all surrounding her. With the living room curtains pulled back, she could see out into Solace City, facing east, all the way to the distant Duchess River. The blue water sparkled with bright white flecks in the afternoon light, the same light that streamed in through the open window. It let a gentle breeze in, rustling loose strands of her hair in front of her eyes. 

This time next year, she’d be on the road to graduating from high school, and she planned to get into Lastimosa University with flying colours in the fall of 2718. It was in the city, she could get there by bus from the stop a few minutes from her apartment building, so she wouldn’t need to stay in the dorms. In the summer, she could get a job—her first job, didn’t matter what it was, just that it paid—and she could work towards buying a car. Her dad promised to teach her how to drive, too. 

Graduate. Get money, get the car. Get accepted. 

So get busy.

Renee had been reading ahead in math and physics. Biology, too, just a little. And French. She already spoke it growing up, because her grandparents wanted her to know how, and they’d pretended for her whole childhood that they couldn’t speak a word of English. She’d felt so betrayed, going to visit them after turning thirteen, and hearing perfect English coming from them. Jem wasn’t in the room at the time, and they swore her to secrecy, bribed her with money—it wasn’t his time to find out yet. 

They ended up in Angelia. Last she’d corresponded with them, they were quite enjoying it there. Nice weather. Nice people. It was like a retirement planet. 

By now, that old reputation of hers had returned full-force. But this time, it was of her own making. She’d graduate top of her class, and that only mattered to her inasmuch as getting her into college, inching her along the road where she needed to go. 

Regarding Jem… he was vague about his plans. He didn’t enjoy school as much as Renee, and he hated to feel like he was being compared to her. That was the old Blasey way—a little competition between siblings, a little bit of a pissing contest about who went into what field. And not just the Blaseys. The Walkers—her maternal side—they were all accomplished, had decorated careers, too. But… Jem cried the last time he was asked what he wanted to be when he grew up. He didn’t know. He just didn’t know. So he was left alone.

Besides, he was smart in other ways. He was built for athleticism, he was exceptional in sport, in basketball. And the boy could run. That’s what he was doing right now, in fact, traversing the streets on foot, probably hardly stopping for a breath. Renee went with him sometimes, but even she had a hard time keeping up. He’d tried getting Elliott in on it, too, but… that’s where the two boys were total opposites. Elliott hated cardio. 

There was a knock on the door. Renee stacked papers haphazardly to the side, before hoisting herself up off the couch. Another knock. Renee stretched, hands reaching for the ceiling as she groaned in exertion. “One sec!”

The door opened, and Renee whipped around to see who it was. “Elliott?”

“Hey,” he said, stepping inside, like he lived there. “Just makin’ sure someone was home before I broke in.”

“Remind me to lock that door from now on.”

He grinned at her. “Where’s Jemothy?”

“On a run,” she said, falling back onto the couch. Paper crinkled underneath her. The nickname was lost on her, but… whatever. “Just left, so you’re stuck with me.”

“You’re not studying, are you?” She watched him disappear into the kitchen out the corner of her eye.

“And what if I was? Where are you going?”

“Is it just us here?”

Renee shifted on the couch, so that her back was pressed to the arm of it, giving her a direct view into the kitchen. Elliott poured himself a glass of water. “My dad’s working, so… yeah. Why?”

He emerged back into the living room, and that’s when Renee noticed the wild look in his eyes. The eyes, the plastered-on smile that couldn’t reach them; the white-knuckled grip on his tumbler of water…

“El…?”

Never mind that being the first time she’d shortened his name like that.

“I’m good,” he said, moving towards the couch. Renee realised in time that he was going to sit next to her, papers and textbooks be damned, so she gathered them in time and set them on the coffee table as he flopped down. He took a sip of water, and let it sit in his mouth for an eternity, before swallowing hard. “Just had a weird day.”

So he was anything but good. “Uh huh?”

“I was thinking,” he said, wetting his lips, before shaking his head vigorously. Renee wished she could see whatever thought it was that had been banished from his mind. “Nah. Never mind. How’s studying?”

“Less interesting than what you’ve got going on. Spill.”

“Huh?”

“What are you doing here?”

Elliott feigned shock. “Can I not visit my friend?”

“You can,” she said, arching an eyebrow, “but you’re normally less weird about it.”

“I’m not being weird, I just feel weird.”

Elliott cringed at himself.

“Okay,” Renee reached over to the coffee table, picking up a sheet of paper at random. “I’m gonna go back to what I was doing, and when you’re ready to say what’s on your mind…”

Silence followed. Renee’s eyes scanned the information on the page, but it seemed to bounce off impermeable eyes, unable to absorb into her head. Then, finally…

“I was thinking about Christmas Eve.”

Oh. Oh boy. Renee pursed her lips. “Christmas Eve?”

“Yeah, well…” Elliott set down the glass, drawing his knees to his chest as he faced her on the other end of the couch. “I kissed both of you.”

“You did.” Renee had absolutely no idea where he was going with this.

“And… I learned…”

Please don’t say it, please don’t say it…

“Elliott, spit it out!”

“Just—let me get through this, okay?” He held his hands up, took a deep breath, then, “You—are you gay?”

Renee furrowed her brow. Not where she thought this was going. “I’m bi.”

Elliott’s mouth formed an O shape, before he nodded, slowly, to himself. “Really?”

“You’ve got to start making sense. Please.”

“Well…” he cradled his face in his hands, squishing his features together. It warbled his speech a little. “I always thought I just liked girls. And then I kissed—then I kissed Jem. And… it’s really weird and also sort of embarrassing, because this is gonna make it sound like I like Jem, but I don’t! Not in that way. But I’ve been giving it a lot of thought. And I’m like… I’d kiss another boy. And that kind of terrifies me. And… and you’re queer, too. So…”

At that, Renee let out a breathy laugh. She hesitated on the word endearing, but— “So… are you trying to say you’re bi, too?”

Elliott blew a breath between his teeth and his closed mouth. He looked like a monkey. “I—maybe? How would I know if I am?”

“I can’t tell you that,” she said gently, “only you can tell you that.”

Renee watched Elliott’s face cycle through the motions. Confusion, worry, a grappling with his sense of self. His arms tightened around his knees, making him look smaller, younger. 

His words were barely above a whisper. “I think I am, then.”

“Nice,” she said, reaching across the couch with a fist. “Welcome to the club.”

Elliott’s knuckles bumped hers. He finally let himself smile, then. “Will you keep it between us for now?”

With a nod, Renee retracted her hand. She knew what it was like. For her, her mom was the first to know, and she remembered the fear of… not only admitting it to someone else, but admitting it to herself. It had been like this in the old days as well, back when everyone still lived on Earth, and you had to weed out who was trustworthy. People were a lot more accepting nowadays, but there were some who’d still give you shit for it, if they were ignorant enough.

But in this moment, Renee felt… well, she felt a sort of kinship with him; a feeling of pride, of being that trustworthy person for someone else. For Elliott. Before, she’d still thought of him somewhat as her brother’s friend. But now… something had shifted. Something had changed. He hadn't gone to Jem. He hadn't gone to his mom; couldn't go to his brothers, now that they were all working with the Frontier Corps. He'd gone to her.

This was her friend.

She offered him a small smile. “Of course I will.” 

Chapter Text

Your career kicked off when you were, like, sixteen? It was when you started your junior year in high school, anyway. Now, when I say your “career”, I mean, like… that’s when you figured out your whole goal.

You didn’t really know exactly what you wanted to do when you were done with college, that much I do remember. All I know is that you… you were gonna do something really cool with your life. Anyone who knew the first thing about you could see it. You were always just… super focused on whatever it was you put your mind to. Super smart; super driven. I mean, not many can say they had their shit together at that age, but in so many ways… you did. You had a job working at that gym you’d been going to, you were learning to drive… y’know?

But, yeah, anyway. Summer of ‘17, I think it was. You were going around the city attending college open days. That’s around the time you met that guy you ended up working with in the end… uh, what was his name? Something… something Singh? Somethin’ like that?

2:08pm

Simply put, the Delgado building was magnificent.

Walking its halls, as irreligious as Renee was, felt like a hallowed experience. This was where the science happened at Lastimosa University, and she knew as soon as she set foot inside of it that this was where she wanted to be.

Where she needed to be.

Lastimosa University was old. Or, at least, it wanted to be—like those old colleges that were still kicking around, some over a thousand years old, back on Earth. It was an enormous campus on the western outskirts of the city, on the road towards Kómma, nestled along the southern edges of the vast Nyx Forest. Brownstone, red and yellow chequered flags draping from every corner of every building; sporting a crest depicting a prowler rearing inside of a kite shield with the hilt of a broadsword in its mouth. 

Then, there were institutions like Solace City University, whose founders preferred to embrace contemporary architecture. Renee liked what she saw during her visit at its open day a week prior, but there was a certain… prestige to LU that drew her in. With their slogan, Pioneer the Future, it seemed that anyone who was anyone in the world of science and technology in the Outlands went here. 

The classrooms and laboratories in the Delgado building had thick, clear glass for walls. There were control panels just inside the door of each room that could frost the glass over when the need to do so arose. Shoes squeaked against white, polished floors, which accented a gunmetal ceiling. A timeless exterior; a sleek, modern interior… it reflected perfectly the namesake of the university—an old, decorated family who had contributed in so many ways to the history of the Frontier.

Not all of it good, of course, as these things tended to be.

Looking in, Renee could see that some rooms were lined with undergraduate students showcasing projects they’d been working on, with holographic banners displaying various disciplines: Robotics Exhibit; Biochemistry Exhibit; Holotechnology Exhibit, and so on. This was where the person guiding the tour turned to Renee’s group and told them they were free to roam about, look around, and ask questions.

The group broke off, wandering in whatever direction took their individual fancies. Renee, along with another girl, found themselves heading towards the physics exhibit. Some presentations had physical prototypes to interact with, but all of them had mobile whiteboards, acting as standees. Each one contained a different question or statement, with infographics pinned to the boards by magnets.

Advanced Ancients: Reverse-engineering a Fold Weapon for use in human-made technologies.

Could humans ever observe a supposed afterlife?

Thesis titles. They were thesis titles, she realised. One in particular caught her eye.

Where do we go from here?

The boy sitting at the desk had brown skin, glasses sliding down his nose, and dark, foppish hair. In front of him was a slice of a tree’s trunk, maybe about an inch thick. He thumbed at it absently as he watched the world go by in front of him, resting his cheek on the closed fist of his other hand. 

Across the room, he met Renee’s eyes. He tilted his head away from his fist, sitting up straighter. Renee found herself moving towards his exhibit.

Amer. That was the name on tag hanging from his breast pocket. Behind him, the only writing on his whiteboard other than the title were the words, what are the rules of the universe, and how do we break them? Renee could feel the boy staring up at her as she studied the words, until finally he asked, “what do you think?”

She didn’t look at him. “What are the terms?”

At that, Amer gave a short hum. “Let’s say…” he said, bringing his hands together thoughtfully, “let’s say that the universe is one infinite, straight line. Let’s say the line itself is time, and everything that exists within the universe is represented by little notches along the line. That means I am a notch, you are a notch, the birds and the trees, the planets, the air we breathe… you get the point. Let’s say these notches inch infinitely along that line at speeds relative to them.”

Renee nodded along as he spoke. The chatter around them seemed to fade away to a low muffle. He finished by asking, “So… what are the rules of being a notch on that line?”

“If the line represents time, then you cannot jump forward, or go backward, or even leave the line.”

Renee finally looked at him as a smile crept across his face. “Precisely. And we do follow these rules; we’ve followed them for millions of years.” He didn’t look away from her as he asked, “So how could we break them? Do you know any of the ways in which we’ve attempted to?”

To break the laws of the infinite line. The question transported Renee back to the conversation she’d had with her mother, a lifetime ago, on the IMS Hagopian.

[…]

“So how would you even do it? Travel to another dimension?” Renee asked, suddenly fourteen all over again. Right down to the way she wore her hair; the way the muscles she’d built up in her body from countless hours at the gym fell away to nothing.

Her mom smirked at her, suddenly alive and well again. In her mind’s eye, at least. “Well, that’s what we’d be trying to figure out,” she said, “but I have a few ideas.”

Renee folded her arms across the table, resting her chin atop her forearms as she looked up, waiting for her mom to continue.

“This is a complicated area of physics. Granted, all of physics is complicated, but—well, for millenia, the theory of alternate dimensions has been considered a sort of pseudoscience. Junk science. Science-fiction—fun to explore in the movies, but an impossibility in real-life. Having said that, I do believe that since Demeter, the IMC has developed what’s known as phase shift technology.”

“Which is…?”

“A technology only usable by simulacra. It grants them the ability to become invulnerable for a short period of time by… entering a different plane of existence.”

Renee furrowed her eyebrows, lifting her head just slightly. “A what now?”

“The ARES Division has been interested in this type of technology for a long time. They’re rumoured to have also developed a tool called the Time Gauntlet.” 

Her mother’s eyes were fixed on something across the room as she spoke. To anyone else, she would appear bored and not fully engaged in the conversation, but Renee knew that this was how she got when she was really excited about something nerdy; getting so into it that she’d forget she was even speaking to someone else, let alone her own daughter.

“When you say this type of technology,” Renee interjected, “you mean…”

Her mom didn’t answer, just tilted her head downward, her eyes encouraging Renee to finish the thought herself.

“You mean…” she repeated, “like, technology that breaks our… understanding of how the world works?”

She nodded. “Precisely.”

“But what is the different plane of existence?”

“Bingo.” Her mom leaned in close, eyes sparkling. “That’s the real question, isn’t it? This technology isn’t perfect—from my reading, it leaves a ghostly trace of you in this world as you traverse the next. Which leads me to believe that this plane of existence is not, in fact, an entirely new dimension in and of itself, but rather… an in-between. Like a corridor leading from one room to the next.”

Renee considered that. If this technology did exist, and her mom was right about it being an in-between, then she didn’t sound as crazy as Renee originally thought.

“And you want to figure out how to get to the next room. If it exists at all.”

“Not only that,” she said, “as I said before, only simulacra have been able to use this tech. I… am interested in the notion of amending that.”

[…]

Blinking back to the present, Renee found herself where she was before. Marching, motherless, toward the age of seventeen, reorienting herself as a stranger awaited an answer from her.

Time Gauntlet. Phase shift technology. She relayed this to Amer, and he sat back in his chair, folding his arms, clearly impressed. 

“You know,” he said, “as a budding young physicist, there are so many lenses through which I’d like to view the universe. The universe. Do you ever think about it?”

Renee pursed her lips. “In… what way?”

“Like… do you ever think of the dust particles on the mantle? Or... or the ants coming and going from their hill? Do you ever think about the sound that's made when a laugh escapes us, how it bounces off the walls, the ceiling, the floor; or how it falls flat in front of us when we're out in the open?"

Renee didn’t usually think about those things, but Amer clearly did. And the way he thought about them was intoxicating—she found herself wanting to think of them in that way, too. “You think about the way things take up space. The how and the why.”

“Most people think about the trillions of stars burning in the sky; how, as we speak, they are coming into existence and dying out at rates we cannot fathom, in places we can never hope to explore in our lifetimes.” He paused to suck in a breath, his eyes widening and pupils dilating wildly as he spoke. “But what you must learn—what you must acknowledge—is that the universe… it’s everyone and everything, all at once. No matter how big or small or impactful or insignificant. No matter if we can’t see it nor comprehend it.”

At his words, Renee’s head spun. She hadn’t had a conversation like this since… well. “Yeah…” she said, so quietly it might as well have been to just herself, “that’s… fascinating.”

“It’s not even the thing that fascinates me most.”

She met his gaze once more. “What fascinates you most?”

Amer smiled, and his fingers danced across the sawed ridges of the tree trunk slice before him. “Living in a universe that we, as a species, have only come to understand through trial and error. I like to call it the evolution of comprehension. Think about how the very earliest of humans wouldn’t have had the capacity to comprehend many of the concepts that we consider part of normal, everyday life. Interstellar travel; the—the neurological link between a Pilot and their titan. The very concept of fast-food. The evolution of comprehension—it’s like...” 

He paused to pick up the slice, and held it between them. “Like rings on a tree. The more we can explain, the farther we can explore.”

Renee eyed the faint, circular lines. This was Amer’s showcase, his pitch. It probably bored a lot of people to death.

“The farther we can take humanity,” she said. It didn’t bore her in the slightest.

He grinned. “The Time Gauntlet brings the wearer to a reflection of the past, where they cannot interact with anyone or anything. Phase shifting is not yet accessible to humans, and while it is groundbreaking, it is not inherently proof that our universe is not the only one out there. For me, that just means there’s much room for improvement.”

Amer was smart. Whip-smart; sharp as a blade’s edge. Enviably so. Inspirationally so.

“So… what is your thesis about?”

He blew out a breath, pushed his glasses up his nose, and set down the tree slice. It all had Renee thinking about in a strange, analytical way. The dull clunk of the wood hitting the surface; the thought of the particles of his breath mingling with the air in the room. 

“Copernicus formulated the heliocentric model of the universe,” said Amer, “later supported by Galileo, who discovered that the Earth was spherical—not flat, as earlier humans believed. Newton discovered the existence of gravity and the laws of physics. We know of the infinite expansion of the universe thanks to Hubble. There’s Einstein’s relativity; Michell’s black holes. Rubin’s major supporting evidence to the existence of dark matter; Kepler’s laws of planetary motion…” 

Another breath. Another wild look. “Heinrich Hammond is credited with the discovery of the Frontier, and is the reason any of us are sitting here today. Physics is the cornerstone from which our species advances. My thesis aims to theorize where we are going next.”

Renee nodded. Where do we go from here?

Where indeed.

July 14, 2717
3:00pm

Bright red board shorts and an equally bright yellow t-shirt. 

It was not, nor would it ever be, Renee’s first choice in an outfit, but she supposed…something, something… needing to stand out at the public swimming pool as a lifeguard-on-duty; something about getting paid to sit in the elevated chair and yell at kids running too fast on the wet sandstone…

Which was exactly what she did—using the flat of her palm as a brim to shield her already sunglass-clad eyes from the sun, scowling down from her perch at them.

If anything, her dad was right. Just give them your best sullen face, he’d said, scrunching his own up into an expression that, honestly, probably wasn’t too dissimilar to what she pulled with these kids, and they’ll all fall in line.

When she got a job working at the gym for the summer, she didn’t imagine she’d be relegated to the outdoor pools they’d opened up to the public for the hot—well, hotter—months. Grunt work, that's what it was. Though she supposed, being sixteen, she was a grunt in the workplace. 

So here she was: braving the midsummer Solace heat. A heat she’d probably never fully adjust to. She’d grown up with the muggy and wet kind back on Typhon. Solace summers were dry and scorching, and for Renee, it wasn’t even worth it. Blasey skin didn’t tan—it only burned at the faintest hint of UV radiation. Freckled, too. Her arms, cheeks and nose were covered in a light dusting of them right now. But the only thing between her and looking like a human tomato was the strongest SPF she could find.

Her thumb was bookmarked between the pages of one of her mother’s journals as she performed one of her obligatory periodic scans of the two large pools before her. Her manager said she could do anything she wanted up there, as long as it didn’t involve headphones. Sometimes, that was stealing her brother’s handheld and gaming away the day. Sometimes, it was mindlessly scrolling the Feed. Today, it was reading.

She glanced back down at the journal resting on her knee, wedging it open with a flex of her fingers.

Time?

It’s a funny thing. For centuries they have said that it is a human-made construct, a unit with which we measure the so-called ‘progression’ of memory. Our memory, that is—the collective memory of all human beings. They also say that everything has already happened. Like, everything. Your birthday and your death day. Your first day of school and your graduation. Your first kiss. The heat death of the universe. It all happened at the exact same time. Some even say that it didn’t happen at all. 

It’s only our human perception, our brain full of memories, that make it seem like everything is happening in a linear, chronological manner. That would mean that there is absolutely no difference between the past and the future.

Really puts things into perspective—why are we humans always in such a rush? When a—

And that was where the words trailed off into an incoherent scribble. Renee’s mother’s handwriting was difficult enough to parse, the fact that these scrawled think-pieces littered throughout the pages of her old journals were not only disjointed, but unfinished? 

It caused a deep and unwelcome aching within her, clawing at aging wounds that had doggedly resisted healing. 

Mouth twisting, Renee turned to the next page. These rambling asides of her mother’s were mostly her going off on tangents in written form, about whatever equations she was working on. With her specialty being jump-drive technology, much of the real-estate of these journals were taken up by mathematical one-way discussions. The paragraphs from the previous page were less common; Renee was more likely to find little comments between the reams of numbers.

Take for example, “I hate the term ‘light-year’. I prefer the parsec!”, or even, “the nebulae are collapsing into stars faster than I can figure this one out.”

It was only recently that Renee could bring herself to open these old things. Until now, they’d lived in a shoe box at the back of her dad’s closet. He’d written Vi’s work stuff in permanent marker on the outside, and there were five journals in there, not including the one Renee had kept for herself back on the Hagopian. At some point, she began to use these notes as a point of reference for her own research, after already finishing next year’s physics curriculum at school. The time note was part of her mother’s pondering over both general and special relativity. 

Relativity. Renee was interested in that. The concept of viewing the universe through a four-dimensional lens; the seemingly inextricable nature between space, matter, energy, time. She was interested in becoming well-versed in the mathematical language her mother was fluent in—the longer she kept at it, the more she learned, the more these journals began to resemble diaries.

It was a fascination that managed to supersede the ache. A fascination that by no means needed reigniting, but had done so anyway after meeting Amer at LU the day before.

In her periphery, Renee saw someone ascending the ladder of the chair across the way.  They were wearing the same uniform as her, and they ducked their head under the umbrella so as to not knock their visor hat or their braids, twisted into space buns, off of it. 

Renee pushed her sunglasses up over her forehead, and squinted at the hit of raw sunlight as she scrutinised what she was seeing. Until now, Renee had been the only lifeguard here… and she recognised this person.

Was that the girl from yesterday? The one who’d entered the physics exhibit with her? The same hairstyle, the dark skin, the body glitter glistening off of it… Renee couldn’t be one-hundred-percent certain from this distance, but—

Then the girl waved at her. Renee waved back, unsure if it was a friendly, hey-new-coworker wave, or one of recognition.

“Hey, Ren!”

She looked down, craning her neck to see who was calling her. Jem, in his slate blue trunks, with Elliott in tow, wearing mustard ones. Like cartoon characters, always wearing something of their favourite colour.

Renee smiled a little. “Hey, boys. Bothering me at my place of work?” At the same time, she reached into the deep pockets of her shorts and retrieved her bottle of sunscreen, and tossed it down to her brother.

“No, we’re going to the pool.” Jem squirted a generous amount onto the palm of his hand, before offering the bottle to Elliott. “You just happen to work here.”

Elliott waved it away, gesturing to himself. “You kidding?” Indeed, Elliott’s t-shirt tan was speaking volumes. His arms were probably three shades darker than the rest of him. “I need some equobble—equa… uh,” he paused to plant his hands on his hips, “I need this to even out!

Renee gave him a sharp look. “You are not immune to melanoma.”

Elliott groaned, before snatching the bottle out of Jem’s hand and mumbling something about uncoolness. Renee didn’t mind, though. Elliott had told her enough times, in so many ways, that he thought she was cool.

“How was that open day, Ren?” he asked, grimacing as he began slathering the lotion across his chest. 

“It’s the one,” she said, sitting back in her chair, hand smoothing across the journal’s hardcover. Truthfully, the thought of studying at Lastimosa University had Renee giddy, but she managed to keep her cool on the surface. “Didn’t your mom go?”

“Sure did! She was in the holotech program. That’s what I wanna do, too.”

Following in his mom’s footsteps. Renee knew the feeling.

Jem tossed the bottle back up to Renee. “Thought you wanted to be a bartender? Take over the Lounge?” he asked.

“No way,” said Elliott, the words coming out of him quicker than they really ought to. “I’ll work there to help out, but… no.” He shook his head, his grin from before returning as quickly as it fell. “I’m gonna be an engineer.”

In response, Jem said, “I’m not going to college.” 

Renee’s eyes widened. It was the first she was hearing of it—the first Jem had mentioned any sort of plan at all, or lack thereof—but the resoluteness in his tone told her that he’d spent long enough thinking about it on his own.

She was about to ask him what he wanted to do instead. No judgment. Even coming from the family and culture they did, Renee recognised that it wasn’t for everyone. But Jem continued, unprompted.

“I’m going to join the Frontier Militia.”

August 29, 2717

10:12pm

“Welcome back. How was your summer, good? Good. Great. Now that those niceties are out of the way… yes, you’re seniors now, and you should be able to sit where you like, but I’m about to assign lab partners. Same partners for the whole year—don’t care if you’re exes, or sworn enemies, or even besties. Just find a way to work together that doesn’t involve giving me a headache. And for the sake of ease, you’ll be sitting next to your lab partner all year, too, so wait for my go-ahead to take your seats. Now—"

Renee’s biology teacher began to rattle off names in pairs as they finished filing in through the door. Despite the droning tone of voice and the my-way-or-the-highway attitude, Renee liked this one. Most kids did. They were one of those teachers that commanded respect in such a way that the majority of students willingly gave it. 

It was the third day of the first week of Renee’s final year of high school. Just eight months between her and that sweet, sweet graduation. She had her game-face on; she was ready for the curricular curveballs. She was ready for the long nights and the early mornings. Whatever it took to secure herself a spot in LU’s revered program of physics.

Whatever it took to get where she needed to go.

“Renee Blasey…” Right. Partners. Renee listened out. “…and Annika Kolisi. Fourth row from the front, right hand side, please.”

Annika Kolisi? Where had Renee heard that name before?

She did as she was told, making a beeline for the seat assigned to her. Just as she slid onto the backless stool, a girl appeared from behind her and slotted herself in next to her.

Renee gave her a once-over. The girl from the open day. The girl from work. That’s where she’d seen the name: on the weekly schedules. She’d never really said two words to Annika Kolisi, just waved politely at her from across the pools whenever their shifts overlapped.

Annika’s face brightened as she, too, recognised Renee. “Small world.”

Renee let out a breath of a laugh. “Something like that. You… new in town?”

Smooth. Remember how to talk to people?

“Something like that.” Annika smiled wryly as she fished around her backpack for her textbook and supplies. “I’m a Psamathe girl. My parents move around a lot for work. It used to always be from city to city to town, then back again, all on Psamathe. Now we’re here. Not sure how long for them, but I’m… obviously starting college next year, so I’ll probably end up settling down here myself.”

Psamathe girl. Since moving to Solace, Renee hadn’t visited any of its neighbouring planets in the Prime System, even though they were well-connected, with frequent transport vessels coming and going between them. Psamathe, as far as Renee knew, was essentially the retirement home planet amongst them.

“Going to LU, I presume?”

Annika nodded. “That’s the plan. Y’know… I overheard that conversation you had with that guy at the exhibit. It was pretty stimulating.”

Her accent was thick; listening to her felt like wading waist-deep through a hidden jungle oasis.

“Oh,” she looked away, unsure why exactly she felt a little embarrassed to hear that. “I just find things like that interesting, I guess.”

“Me too, girl,” she said, eyes darting around the room now that everyone was seated. Her voiced dropped, and she leaned in a little closer, just before the lesson began. “Though, I’m leaning more towards biophysics. Either way—we should study together sometime!”

Renee didn’t get a chance to respond as the teacher directed them to open to the first chapter of their textbooks. But she couldn’t argue with the math—three chance encounters with this girl, and Annika had seemingly decided they were fated to be friends.

And, well… if everything that was ever going to happen truly already had happened, that would make fate… scientific fact, right?

If so, Renee couldn’t help but wonder what else fate had in store.

Chapter Text

Y’know, whatever I knew about your ma, I learned most of it from Jem. You didn’t like to talk about her. She was, uh, like, eclem—ecloh—eck… she was weird. But in a cool way. From what I gathered, you were a lot like her. Stupid smart, real self-assured, ambitious… Jem said you wanted to be just like her, that it was super obvious. 

I can relate to that. I wanted to be just like my mom growing up. Still do, to be honest. But I bet Violet would’ve been really proud of everything you’d achieved in your life. At least, everything you’d achieved in the time I knew you.

12:59pm

Eight months later, Renee had fate on her mind once again. 

The graduating class of 2718. The school's gymnasium abuzz with cheers, whoops and whistles; with a sea of graduation caps arcing up towards the ceiling before returning to the awaiting hands that threw them. The feeling of the silver plaque nestled in the crook of her arm, the words academic excellence etched into its surface. 

Her dad had never been ashamed to cry, and it was no different when she managed to find him and her brother in the crowd the moment she accepted the award. It was the same moment that Renee noticed the empty seat next to him. And she grinned; she shook the vice principal's hand. She allowed the sense of achievement and pride in herself to wash over her. 

But it lingered, that empty seat. It took up residence in the back of her mind. 

To keep some semblance of order, the graduates were instructed to exit the gym before the guests. Outside, Renee found Annika, who was talking animatedly with a group of kids from their class. Annika was popular enough, despite only having been at the school for the past year. Renee supposed that came with moving around a lot: learning to be outgoing and likable so as to not fall behind socially. 

But she excused herself from the group when she spotted Renee. She didn’t quite understand it—that Annika wanted to be friends with her. It wasn’t that Renee didn’t think she was worth anyone’s time, it was more that… quiet and reserved and all the other adjectives that came with those characteristics weren’t normally what someone like Annika—someone extroverted, funny, bubbly—would look for in a friend.

In spite of this, Annika advanced on her, arms outstretching as she neared, with pure delight taking over her face. “Oh my god,” she squealed, her eyes on the plaque, “Look at you, congrats!”

Renee couldn’t deny herself that infectious delight, and she even squeezed Annika back when she wrapped her arms around Renee. When Annika pulled away, one of her hands lingered on Renee’s shoulders. “Well, look at you,” she replied, nodding toward the biology award in Annika's free hand. “LU, here we come.”

At her own words, Renee grinned. They’d both been accepted into their chosen programs, and this plaque in her hand was her ticket to a free ride through. It meant her dad wouldn’t need to buckle down at work; it meant Renee could reduce her hours at her own job, just to keep her own income. Really, she was indifferent about working. It was taking the pressure off her dad that meant more to her.

“LU, here we come!” Annika repeated, shaking Renee a little. Renee laughed. “And out of this—“

Annika cut herself off, and her eyes widened at something past Renee’s shoulder. Renee knew she was about to say out of this hellhole or dump or any of the other choice words she had for this school. Three years ago, Renee would have wholeheartedly agreed. But just like the rest of this city, this planet, Renee could honestly say she could see past its issues to the charm underneath. 

Regaining her composure, Annika’s face morphed effortlessly into her signature wide smile. “Hi, Principal Brinkman!”

Ah. Right.

Renee turned to face the principal as she approached the two of them with her hands behind her back. She caught a lot of flak from kids for her zero-tolerance for bullshit, her severe, weathered face, and the streaks of grey slowly overtaking locks of blond. For Renee, she only ever saw the woman that appeared like a hand plummeting into rough seas, offering to catch her as she sank helplessly into its depths.

But only if Renee was willing to take it.

Once the principal was close enough, she said, “congratulations, you two. I’m pleased to see you come so far after such a short time here, Miss Kolisi. And Miss Blasey,” she eyed Renee, and let out a little huff to herself. “A moment, if you would be so kind.”

Annika gave Renee’s shoulder a squeeze, before stepping away. Behind her, Renee heard Annika begin to laugh as someone yelled across the grass in Afrikaans to her. She responded, “Die slimste een in die familie, ek!”

Renee only understood the word for family, but she could make an educated guess as to what Annika was saying to her parents.

“I wanted to personally congratulate you,” said Principal Brinkman, once Renee’s full attention was on her. “It’s been a pleasure to watch you grow and change since you came to this school.”

Grow and change. In so many ways, Renee still felt like the girl sitting in the principal’s office, so full of grief and anger that it seemed to spill out of her through every orifice in her body. In so many ways, Renee felt like she might return to that state if she wasn’t constantly and vigilantly distracting herself from it. Even so, she did grow, in the sense she learned to manage it. She did change, in the sense she allowed herself to live once more; in the sense she stopped punishing herself for things that were out of her control. 

She turned to the things she could control. She chased them.

The principal’s smiles were always tight-lipped; tightly regulated. But Renee could see this one had reached her eyes. “Thank you. I’m sorry for the difficulty at first—that’s…” she held the plaque against her stomach, and her fingers ran along its wooden ridges. “It’s not a version of myself I want to go back to.”

“It’s not me you should apologise to, Miss Blasey, or even thank. I’ve been in this career for fifteen years—I can’t tell you how many times I had that same conversation with a student that I had with you. Nine times out of ten, it falls on deaf ears, and it only serves to fuel their path of destruction.” 

Principal Brinkman reached to touch the metal plate of Renee’s plaque. Renee held it out for her, and she took it, continuing as she looked down on it. “That you found the courage to be kind to yourself in that difficult time… that’s all on you.” She looked up, and handed the plaque back to Renee. “The trick is to always be kind to yourself, no matter what.”

“I know,” Renee said.

“Easy to say, harder to do.” Principal Brinkman’s hands found one another behind her back once more. “I remember what your old headmaster back on Typhon said about you, that you’d go far in this life. I can now say with confidence that I agree. You’ll go far,” she said, “far and wide. Good luck with it. But don’t forget where you came from when you get there, okay?”

5:43pm

It wasn’t lost on Renee that her father decided to cook up what was, for lack of a better term, a banquet of all her grandmother’s favourite traditional dishes. Her maternal grandmother, that was. Gina Walker was Japanese, and she would always serve meals like tamagoyaki, onigiri, donburi; shabu-shabu, whenever Renee and her family made the journey to Harmony for a visit. 

Growing up on Typhon, she was never all that in touch with her Japanese side. She never had the incentive to learn the language the way she did with French. But the food… god, she loved the food her grandmother used to make. 

Still, Renee knew it wasn’t her grandmother that her dad was trying to honour. Not exactly.

A lot of the kids, Annika included, were going to someone’s house for a big party tonight. Renee was welcome to go, but this was how she preferred to celebrate. Her dad, her brother, and…

A knock on the door.

From the kitchen, she could hear the smile in her dad’s voice. “Think that’s for you, monkey.”

Her eyebrows knitted together as she went to open it. On the other side, she was met with Elliott and Evelyn’s beaming faces.

And suddenly the banquet made more sense.

“Hi, honey!” Evelyn bounded for her, enveloping her in a tight hug. The contact sent a puff of air from Renee’s lungs as she hugged Elliott’s mother back. She was smiling while she thought of the empty chair in the auditorium. But Evelyn had always been good to her, right from the moment Renee met her, and there was a level of pride in Evelyn’s expression when she pulled back to get a look at her. “Congratulations. How’s it feel to be all done with high school?”

“Hasn’t really set in, yet.” Renee took a step back to let her inside. “Thanks for coming, Mrs. Witt.”

“Oh, you!” Evelyn squeezed her shoulders. “What have I said a hundred times?”

Renee chuckled. “Evelyn. I meant to say Evelyn, sorry.”

“Much better.” 

She stepped inside, past Renee, revealing Elliott behind her. Just like Jem, he’d grown taller than her somewhere along the way. He’d recently been growing his hair out, and the dark curls tumbled down his neck, covering his ears, and veiling his eyes. He was constantly flicking his head to the side to push them out of his sight. At only fifteen, he had this awful, thick, dark, patchy fuzz growing over his upper lip and on his chin, and he wasn’t willing to shave it off just yet. He thought it made him look older; more mature, but paired with the haircut and the pimples on his cheeks and forehead, he just looked a bit disheveled.

Elliott sent finger-guns and a wink her way. “Nice job, smarty-pants,” he said, and Renee rolled her eyes as he bent to give her a hug of his own. 

Almost two years of friendship, but she’d never had a reason to hug Elliott before. Or maybe she did, and she just didn’t seize it. Despite looking like a bum, he took care of his personal hygiene, and he seemed to hug her like he really meant it—arms pulling her right in, hand patting her shoulder-blade, the two of them stewing in it for a longer than was simply politeness on Elliott’s part. 

Fate on her mind. An empty chair amongst a crowd of people. Wherever she came from, wherever she was going… this boy, with his intense vulnerability bursting at the seams, had wormed his way into her life, past her defenses. And with fate on her mind, she couldn’t even begin to speculate the part he was playing—had played, will play—in all of it.

After eating, she, him, and Jem sat around the living room, with playing cards in each of their hands. Elliott had set up a game—Bullshit, he said it was called—and had spent a few rounds teaching her and Jem how to play. She sat with her back against the arm of the chair, looking into the kitchen. Her usual perch, where she watched from afar how Evelyn helped her dad clean up, how they stood apart in the kitchen with steaming mugs in hand, conversing quietly with one another. One, whose husband was practically estranged from the family; the other, whose wife had died long before she was supposed to. The two of them, dealing with it in their own ways for the sake of their kids. 

The two of them, who understood what the other was going through. But just as it was with Bullshit, these were the hands they’d been dealt. 

Renee turned her attention back to the game. Time to play with what you got.

9:13pm

It was just the two of them now, Renee and her dad. Elliott and Evelyn had just gone home, and Jem had retired to bed. She still sat in the same place as before, hugging her knees to her chest. She couldn’t help but feel that the day, the night, was unfinished. That something had been left unsaid; left undone. Part of Renee knew what it was, and she wanted to skirt around it, to forget about it, to avoid it.

But her dad looked at her, one half of his mouth frowning, the other half smiling. And he said, “I know your mother would have loved to have been there to see you.”

“Dad…” her tone was cautious, warning, reflecting alarm bells going off in her head. A tug-of-war that she’d been digging her heels into, heaving, trying to win for forever. It felt like she was playing against the unrelenting jaws of a prowler, who would never, ever let up; never, ever concede to her.

Eventually, she’d have to yield against it.

“I know. I…” the words caught in her throat, and she watched her thumb soothe repeatedly across her knuckles. “I wanted her there, too.”

The empty chair. The truth.

“There’s something I want to show you,” he said. 

He stood, and offered her a hand up, which she took. She followed him into his bedroom, and he instructed her to sit on the bed. He told her to close her eyes and hold out her hands. A moment later, her fingers wrapped around what felt like a sheet of cool, smooth metal.

“Okay. Open them,” he instructed.

There was a tablet in her hands. Her dad was lingering by the door, and he gave her a smile and a nod as he left her alone in the room. 

On the screen, staring back at her, was her mother. 

The last time Renee saw her, all bony and frail and a shell of the woman she had known her whole life… that image had been burned into her psyche. But this? This was how she ought to remember her. That face—sick, yes—but bright; full of life, full of possibility and wonder. Those eyes, an undying fire always burning behind them.

There was a play symbol in the centre of the screen. Swallowing past the hard, painful lump in her throat, Renee pressed it, and her mother came to life.

Renee, she began, if you’re watching this, it means, well—obviously, I’m dead. 

The knowledge of how sick I am scares me. Not because I’m afraid to die… not even because there’s much, much more for me to accomplish in this life. Ha, I have a whole laundry list of things. But you know me: what I fear most is idle hands. And truthfully, the single most important thing I accomplished—what I had yet to accomplish—was to see out the raising of you and your brother. 

But this isn’t about James. He’s getting his own—don’t tell him.

Renee smiled a little around her front teeth, which were sunk deep into her lower lip as she blinked away tears. 

Lying in this bed, while I’m still capable of wondering, I think about everything I’m going to miss out on. I won’t be there for your first day at your new school. I won’t be there to help you choose where you’d like to go for college. This—her mother paused to cough, and she winced a little in pain—this will be our first time to speak to each other since I left this life, and for everything I ever missed since then, I wanted to be there to congratulate you for graduating high school. So begins your adult life.

Her mom grinned, big and wide, and for a moment, Renee forgot she wasn’t sitting right across from her in the flesh. 

So, congratulations, baby. Wherever I am, when you see this, I hope the pride I feel for you transcends space, time—death itself—I hope you know it, feel it in your heart. I was never afraid to die—energy cannot be created nor destroyed; it can only change shape. But I fear leaving you behind. I fear the idea that I won’t be able to witness all the amazing things you’re going to do with your own life. But, I know that just means we’ll have a lot to catch up on whenever I see you next.

When my time comes, I’m going to try and tell you something. I want these words to be my last. But, if I can’t, my contingency is to tell you in this recording. 

Her last words. The one’s that Renee had cut off; the one’s she hadn’t allowed her mother to say.

So, here it is: the most powerful thing in the universe… is memory. It is not something we can measure or ever hope to quantify. But understand, memory is the stuff that can create certainty and uncertainty. If your mind is strong, you can be certain of anything. You must also understand that nothing can be certain. 

Her mom shook her head, a wild conviction in her eyes. Not even death, Renee.

There are those who have passed and had their consciousness preserved and transferred to a new vessel. There are those whose memories and legacies live on in others. Do you see? As long as you’re remembered, as long as you remember, you can never truly die.

I know that some of my ideas and beliefs are questionable at best; laughable at worst. What’s so bad about being laughable, you ask? Well… how soul-crushing is it to live in a world where an unrealised passion is seen as being so beyond the realm of possibility that the only response is to view it with humour? I urge you to find things in this life questionable. That means they’re possible.

Of all the things I believe, what I am most confident in is that you were made for greatness. You, too, have the capacity to cheat death. So… go and do that, however you see fit.

I love you always, I love you endlessly. I love you in this life and in the next. 

Mom.

By the time the video ended, Renee could barely see her mother through the tears in her eyes. Her face remained frozen in time on the tablet screen, her eyes crinkled in the corners, that smile of hers small but meaningful on her face. The way Renee ought to remember her. 

The way she hadn’t. 

The way she failed her, the way she’d been doing everything in her power to not remember her mother at all. She’d buried her deep down; she’d batted her away time and time again at the boxing bag. If the hypothesis was that one could never truly die, Renee had spent the past three years doing her utmost to debunk it. 

But the truth was, whenever Renee was homesick, it was because she missed her mom. She missed her, she missed her agonisingly, she missed her so much it physically hurt. 

She pulled the tablet close to her chest, wrapping her arms around it, resting her forehead atop it, sobbing into it. In doing so, she must have pressed the play button again, because she heard her mother’s voice once more. Renee didn’t move, just let the video repeat as she sat at alone at the edge of her father’s bed.

Her mom was dead. She was never coming back. But that hadn’t stopped Renee from killing her, over and over again, in her own mind.

Perhaps it was time to let her come back to life.

Chapter Text

It was interesting, like, from an outsider’s perspective, watching you and Jem. How you guys only became closer as time went on. I feel like it takes a lot of siblings until they’re adults to get like that, and it always used to make me wish that one of my brothers were closer to my age. It didn’t help that mine had been away for a while, working with the Corps.

Although, I always thought of Jem as my brother. I… I still do.

I guess… after Jem said he was gonna join the Militia, he really started to take it seriously. He was getting involved in politics and local community stuff, he joined the gym and started training… stuff like that. 

Then with you… you’d just started college and—oh. Oh my god! You had these purple streaks in your hair for a while. You started wearing, like, leather jackets and combat boots and stuff. Big hoop earrings. You got your nose pierced, too. 

Oh, hey. You still do. 

1:55pm

There was something about it: the roar of the crowd, the resounding, rumbling song of timpani and gong. The weak bite of early winter nipping at Elliott, sandwiched between Renee and Jem, in the midst of a sea of eager spectators.

That his sixteenth birthday happened to fall on a Saturday this year, during the Thunderdome 2718 Winter Series… that he’d come home from school the day before to a letter from his brothers in the mailbox, with three tickets falling out of the card as he opened it, a message awaiting him inside…

Hey little man,

Happy happy birthday, hope we timed this right. 
Sorry we couldn’t be there to celebrate, we miss you.
Hopefully these make up for it. Go with your friends… show ‘em how we do it in the Outlands!

Love,
Rog, Rick, Lonnie. 

… In a way, it totally made up for the whole not seeing them for two years. 

Since Harmony, the Corps had been working salvage missions with the Militia. The work didn’t pay, but it was always what his older brothers were going to do. When the Battle of Typhon happened, Roger was twenty; the twins were freshly eighteen… they wanted to help; be on the right side of history, they said. They linked up with Uncle Droz, and were currently living on a carrier called the MCS Trinity, going between there and the decimated planet in search of, well… anything.

Or anyone.

No, it didn’t pay, but his brothers found fulfillment in it. And for that, Elliott couldn’t hold their absence against them. Not even while it was just him and his mom, not even while she’d had to put her career on the backburner to keep the bar afloat. Not even… 

Well, she was going to be fifty in a few months, but life had been weathering her recently. She’d been doing things—forgetting things—that she normally wouldn’t. Like… not being able to find the right word when she was talking about something; getting sidetracked—not being able to remember what she was working on. And she’d stopped gardening, stopped painting. 

Elliott was pretty sure his mom just needed a break. He helped where he could, but with school, and college on the horizon, there was only so much he could do.

But right here, right now, as Elliott looked down on the famed arena… yeah. There was something about it—he just couldn’t put his finger on what. 

Next to him, Renee’s eyes scanned it with a scrutiny that, at this point, almost seemed signature to her. It was something of a miracle that she was here at all, what with her being so busy having just started college and all that. Renee being Renee, she really hit the ground running—he’d barely gotten to spend any time with her this past month. Always with her nose buried in a textbook; always halfheartedly partaking in conversation, her tone droning, her expression a million miles away from whatever he was saying. 

But she was here, and Elliott was currently wearing her gift to him: an LU hoodie with his initials embroidered onto the right breast. She’d jokingly told him not to wear it to threads before starting there himself, and the assuredness with which she said it filled him dangerously to the brim with an almost desperate sort of hope.

He must have been beaming hard enough to make her question the whole thing, because she asked, “So… you actually find this whole… modern day coliseum stuff… fun?”

Elliott had a vague idea of what she was talking about. Something to do with Earth history that he’d learned as a kid. “Heck yeah, it’s fun. It used to just be for the soldiers to, uh—like, blow off steam. It’s evolved into this whole thing though. It’s just bloodsport.”

“Just bloodsport,” Jem laughed next to him, “You know, we never had anything like this. Like… at all. People dying, for real… for entertainment?”

Yet another cultural difference. Like… like how Typhonians didn’t eat flyer. Elliott would never be able to scrub it from his mind: the look on their faces when they learned it was as commonly eaten as chicken or beef here. He jutted out his lower lip, wondering how he could upsell the whole thing to them. Not that his enjoyment of this was riding on their enjoyment of it…

Or, maybe it was?

Whatever.

“Well, you can’t really feel sorry for ‘em. The competitors go into it knowing they could die. No one forces them to do it, y’know? Besides,” he continued, “some of them are rich enough to get regen’d.”

At that, Renee shrugged. Elliott couldn’t be sure how much of it was in agreement. “Like those underground gauntlets in Angelia. I wouldn’t say those guys can afford regens, though.”

“You get gauntlets everywhere,” Elliott said, “Here in the city, Gaea, Psamathe… hell, even Talos has ‘em. But none of them are televised like Thunderdome.”

Jem leaned forward to get a look at Elliott and Renee. “I’ve seen some of the Bonecage fights they do on Salvo. Like, the streams on the Feed. That shit’s brutal.”

With the conversation going in his favour, Elliott relaxed a little, and he leaned back in the red plastic seat. “Well, this is more like a last-team-standing-wins type deal. The longtimers are…” his smile grew fond, “they’re legends, really. Been doing this for years. They’re the coolest.”

He wasn’t looking at her, but Elliott just knew Renee was raising an eyebrow at him. “Someone sounds inspired.”

“Come on,” he said, “wouldn’t you compete? All that fame, glory, money…”

It was an attractive idea. He’d been coming here for years, and he always liked to at least entertain the thought. The thought of who he could be to the crowd; what he’d do to capture their attention. What he’d make of himself in a game like this.

Besides, Kings Canyon was everything he loved about this planet—he loved the landscape, he loved the heat, he loved the grit and the opportunity hidden under every stone, just waiting to be turned. Some said that Solace was humanity taking steps backward, and that spectacles like the Thunderdome Games, where its blood and violence was celebrated, sought after, and rewarded, were the manifestations of that.

But for Elliott, it was simple. No one makes it out alive, anyway. Not everyone got to choose how they go, but these guys did. And they’re remembered for it. 

Wasn’t that honorable?

Renee cracked a smile. At least she could fight; at least she had the guts to do it. More than he figured he ever could. “I don’t know if fame or glory would be on my list. I’d need a better reason than that.”

“A better reason…” Jem took a thoughtful sip of his drink, his gaze casting over the arena, the crowd, “guess that’s why I’m joining the Militia.”

Hope nobody heard that. 

Not that Elliott disagreed, or thought he was wrong, just—it was hard to know who’s loyalties lay where. It was hard to extricate the IMC from anything. They employed, they educated; they governed. And at the same time, they pillaged, they punished; they exploited. And they had never really tried to be subtle about it, either. Something about biting the hand that fed you. But Elliott knew what Jem would say: it was more like biting the hand that monopolised feeding you.

Of course, neither Renee nor Jem came from a world where bloodshed was how things got done. Although, war was a universal language, wasn’t it? Whether it was for sport or freedom or… or ownership. Everyone had their reasons.

Their attention was brought back to the arena as the collective murmur of the crowd erupted into something much more ear-piercing than before—if that was even possible. Applause, whistles, screams, horns blowing; cymbals and gongs crashing over the loudspeakers. Dotted around the perimeter of the arena were four enormous gates, with steel slats rolling upwards to reveal the competing trios: team wolf, team bear, team eagle, and team tiger.

Elliott grinned as he joined in on the cheering, bumping Renee’s shoulder with his as she gave him a sidelong glance. She was so making fun of him with her eyes; shaking her head at him, and Elliott could dare say there was a hint of affection to it. 

Score.

He loved his friends, but this was what Elliott came to see: four teams duking it out for the top spot, inching towards the edge of his seat, hands curling into fists, gnawing his knuckles between his teeth in those moments where anything could happen; anyone could win; anyone could lose. There was the gasps and cheers of the crowd as bullets flew into the invisible barrier separating them from the arena, as the forcefield rippled like pebbles thrown into still water. 

And there was something about it. And maybe, this time, Elliott could put it into words.

Wouldn’t you compete, he’d asked Renee, all that fame, glory, money?

Not everyone got to choose how they go, but these guys did. And they’re remembered for it.

A pipe dream. But a dream nonetheless. Holotech was Elliott’s goal, but this arena, this ocean of adoring fans, those competitors with their courage and their brazenness, grabbing life by the scruff of the neck…

Yeah. His pipe dream.

He was still grinning even after the game concluded, and they walked down the exit tunnel in search of the gift concession. The little sweet 16 badge pinned to Elliott’s shirt had earned him a coupon for a free keychain from one of the admittance workers, and he was planning on cashing in—his heart was set on an enamel chibi of August ‘Ballistic’ Brinkman. 

A set of statuettes and placards caught Jem’s attention, and he broke off from Elliott and Renee as they neared the kiosk together. Behind the counter was a huge guy with an equally huge smile, probably around Elliott’s age, with bronze skin and long, dark hair pulled up into a bun. 

Elliott turned the rotating display stand full of keychains, before zeroing in on the one he was looking for. He handed it, along with the coupon, to the overly-jolly concessions guy, who said, “An excellent choice, brotha. Oh—“ he eyed the badge on his shirt, his smile growing impossibly wider. “Happy birthday!”

As they wandered back towards where Jem stood, Elliott had to wonder how someone could come across as genuinely happy as that guy, while working at a crappy little gift shop on a manic Saturday.

Maybe someone who dreamed as big as Elliott did.

5:18pm

Curving his hands around his mouth, Elliott lowered his voice, calling out through his faux-megaphone as Renee took her shot. “She shoots…”

She didn’t grace him with a glance as the basketball sailed through the air, before swirling around the lip of the hoop. It looked, for just a moment, as if the ball would teeter over the wrong side, but it fell through the net at the last moment. He didn’t miss the tiny, satisfied smile she allowed herself.

“…she scores!”

The sun was just beginning to set, and Elliott’s backyard had shadowed over, with a yellow sliver of light receding steadily into the back corner—this was what Jem liked to call golden hour at the Witt’s. And Elliott supposed it helped him to see the beauty in it. 

They’d gotten back from Kings Canyon Peninsula a while ago. They’d hung around a little longer than Elliott expected—he figured they’d want to go home after the game; after a long day, if even just Renee.

But they were still here. Spending time with him just because. 

Jem caught the ball as it bounded his way. “Well,” he said, positioning himself to take a shot of his own, “if holotech doesn’t work out for you, you could be the next Thunderdome announcer.”

Elliott let out a quiet chuckle, mostly to himself, as he watched Jem let fly. The ball hit off the corner of the backboard, ricocheting towards Elliott. He could have taken the opportunity to correct Jem, to let him know that, actually, he had bigger dreams in the way of the Thunderdome, but…

No. He didn’t want to jinx it.

Elliott took the ball in his hands. From one moment to the next, the back garden grew exponentially darker. They’d need the porch light soon enough. 

Instead of letting them in on his thoughts, he asked, “You guys liked it?”

He thought they did. Renee wasn’t much for being… outwardly emotive, but Elliott liked to believe he’d cracked the code—she had tells; micro-expressions. When she was happy, her eyes would smile before her mouth, and when it did, it only quirked up a little in one corner. When she was angry or upset, her jaw would clench, pushing her lips into a thin, straight line. A lot of the time, her eyebrows did most of the talking. 

“Yeah,” she said. She had those eyes, and that mouth fleetingly followed. “I don’t know how they pull it off, but you kind of forget you’re watching people kill each other.”

Jem hummed in agreement. “I was really rooting for the bears.”

“The bears rock,” Elliott said.

“He says that,” Renee said, voice smug, “but we had bears around where we used to live.  He was terrified they were going to break in and eat him.”

Jem scoffed. “Uh, hello—bears aren’t even native to Typhon!” He turned to face Elliott, gesturing wildly in his defense. “Like, dude. These things escaped from a nearby research centre. They were definitely hungry! I think I’m pretty justified here.”

“I had to share my room with him for weeks,” Renee crossed her arms over her chest, clearly lapping up her brother’s reaction. “He refused to sleep alone. Or even leave the house alone, for that matter.”

“I was, like, nine, dude.”

Elliott shook his head in amusement. He’d heard enough of these spats over the years to know they were just poking fun at each other. He bent his knees a little as he finally readied his shot, launching the ball just as the back door swung open. 

His mom appeared in the doorway. She leaned against the frame and hugged herself against the evening chill as she took in the three of them before her.

“Nice shot, honey,” his mom winked at him as the ball went straight through the hoop. “Future engineer, or future SBA star?”

“Future Thunderdome Games announcer,” Jem repeated. 

Elliott laughed. It was great to have so many prospects, but he still wasn’t gonna jinx it. “I got time for all three,” he offered with a nonchalant shrug.

His mom inclined her head, her gaze moving to Renee. “Hey, you. Long time no see. How’s college so far?”

Somewhere along the way, the ball ended up back in her hands. This time, one of those rare, real smiles bloomed across Renee’s face. “Loving it,” she said, sending the ball down towards the concrete; letting it bounce back into her awaiting hand. Her tone was sincere, excited. “Busy. Swamped. Losing sleep. But it’s great, really.”

“Atta girl,” his mom winked again. “You kids wanna stay for something to eat? I…” she paused, a sheepishness overtaking her expression. Elliott knew immediately it was a very false sort of sheepishness. “I may have accidentally made too much food for just me and Ellie...”

Elliott rolled his eyes, despite the way his heart sang. His mom loved his friends. His friends loved his mom. She was always asking about them, always worried about them—as if they were her own. And Renee and Jem… Elliott saw the way they transformed when she was around. He saw it because he recognised it in himself, whenever he was around their dad. There was something… indulgent about it. Something Elliott felt he ought to soak up; to savour.

And he looked at them now. Renee and Jem, his best friends in the whole world, hanging around in his backyard, playing basketball and shooting the breeze with his mom. His chest swelled with something he couldn’t quite name.

Elliott honestly expected Renee to politely decline. But she shared a look with her brother, before nodding a little. “Cool. I’ll just let my dad know. Thanks, Evelyn.”

Oh. It was… it was love. Elliott was pretty sure it was love.

Chapter Text

I need you to know that… whatever I tell you from here on out… it’s—I’m—

I’m being one-hundred-percent for real. I mean, I have been from the start. I’ve been honest with you about all of it. But if what you say is true, that you don’t remember anything of what I’ve told you so far; that you don’t remember me…

Just—I know you want to know about your life. I want you to know about it, too, ‘cause you… you were incruh—increm—you… were… incredible. There, heh. But, y’know, I’ve had more than a decade to think about all this. And one thing that I always beat myself up over is that I never told you how I really felt. 

About you, and us, and… and about everything that happened between us—the good and the bad.

I guess, what I’m trying to say is… I’m not afraid anymore, and I often wonder if I hadn’t been so afraid… would things have turned out any different?

10:31pm

“Ren…”

Somewhere, deep down, she knew the voice that was calling her wasn’t as far-off as she imagined. It was like… when someone tried to wake another from a dream—the way their name, repeated over and over, wormed its way into the narrative and became one with it. 

She hummed reflexively, though her eyes never left the pages in front of her. Her name glided down the hypotenuse of a triangle. Trig was too easy, but she had to do it. And she had to do polynomials, exponentials, logarithms. She missed particle physics 101—now that was a challenge. 

Although, it didn’t change the fact that getting lost in the numbers had become a favourite pastime of hers in the last few months. 

“Rennn…”

Next year they’d be diving deeper into theoretical physics. She had taken an elective in philosophy, too, and she wanted to pursue that further. To the naked eye, the two disciplines were miles away from each other—the numbers; the meaning of life. But weren’t the numbers etched imperceptibly into the fabric of the universe? Didn’t humans live their lives in that universe? 

And could they say with confidence that they had even scratched the surface in understanding it? Understanding the universe—or even the meaning of life, for that matter.

“She’s lost in the sauce, man.” The voice was drifting farther away; she didn’t even have the good sense to crack a smile in acknowledgment. “On three?”

“Okay, okay…”

The numbers, the numbers. Her hand flew across the digital page, the dull thud of her tablet’s pen tapping with fervour against the screen. Another graph, another single helix weaving its way across the x-axis. 

“Three… two… one…”

What were we counting down for?

“RENEE!”

It was just like being woken from a dream. Renee blinked, hummed again, this time back in the present. 

She was in her own living room, cross-legged on the couch. There were two boys staring up at her from the floor, with controllers in their laps. The TV was on, displaying a game’s main menu. There was an open pizza box on the coffee table.

“What?”

Elliott and Jem exchanged a look. Jem raised an eyebrow at her. “We called your name multiple times.”

“Yeah,” she shrugged, setting her tablet aside. “And I was like, hmm? And you didn’t say anything.”

“I asked you if you wanted the last slice.”

Oh. Lost in the sauce. Next to him, Elliott snorted. 

Renee shuffled forward, reaching a hand out. “Give it, then.”

Ignoring the disappointed look on Elliott’s face, Renee grabbed the pizza slice in question as Jem held the box out for her. “You know,” he said, “it’s hard to stay up all night playing video games and eating junk when you’re going all bug-eyed over math over there.”

“And… it’s almost eleven at night,” Elliott added, “no one does homework at eleven at night.”

She gave him a wry smile, before taking a bite of her pizza. Her next words were garbled around the mouthful. “Said confidently by someone who isn’t in college yet.”

The truth was, Renee didn’t have all the time in the world to devote to Elliott and Jem anymore. One could argue that she was acing her studies so hard that she could afford to make time, but… it was hard to sit there and say it was just about the grades. No, not hard, but rather… disingenuous. Insincere. It was as though they were trying to pull her away from a really good book, right in the middle of the climax. 

But she did promise to hang out this weekend, so she supposed it was high time she made good on that.

As Jem went to offer her a controller, her dad’s bedroom door flung open. He stepped backward into the living room with an armful of pillows and a blanket. “Here we go,” he said, turning on his heel, “suppose you deserve somewhere to sleep tonight, monkey three.”

Elliott, being monkey three, laughed a little. “Thanks, Ethan.”

Renee’s dad plopped the stuff onto the arm of the couch and continued moving into the kitchen. To make himself a cup of chamomile before bed, Renee presumed. “I’d ask you kids not to stay up all night making a ruckus,” he called out, switching on the kettle and rummaging through the cupboards, “but who am I kidding?”

With Jem’s hand still suspended in the air before her, Renee grabbed the controller from him. “We’ll be quiet, dad.”

She gave her dad a sidelong glance, waggling her eyebrows in silent question. His mouth twitched in amusement as he rolled his eyes and grabbed another mug, placing it next to his on the counter. 

As the kettle hissed gently away, her dad lingered by the archway leading back into the living room, leaning his shoulder against its gradually curving frame. A small smile was disappearing into his thick, slowly greying moustache. His wild, lightning-struck hair was going the same way. There were tufts of white by his ears; pale streaks infiltrating their way through his head of dark locks.

Renee hadn’t really stopped to notice her dad getting older. But they all were. She’d been eighteen for three months. Jem would be seventeen in July, and Elliott would follow suit in October. And it’d keep going that way—year in, year out—with time being the unstoppable force that it was.

That small smile. Maybe her dad was thinking the exact same thing as he watched them.

Sliding down from the couch to the floor, the boys parted ways as Renee inserted herself between them. “What are we playing?”

“Fall Guys: Remastered, of course,” said Jem.

Renee groaned, even though she liked the game, and they knew she liked the game. The chances of winning, or even placing, flip-flopped too unpredictably between luck and skill. How could she squeeze enjoyment out of it if she couldn’t figure it out; couldn’t master it?

While Elliott got stuck on customising his character, Renee’s dad passed by, setting a mug of tea down onto the coffee table for her. “Night, kiddos. Sleep tight. Or don’t.”

Not one minute after his bedroom door clicked softly shut behind him, Jem asked, “So, El… you bring any… stuff?”

Renee scoffed. “You say that like he’s a drug dealer,” she said, to which Jem stuck his tongue out at her. Of course, it was pretty easy for Elliott to smuggle any ‘stuff’ from his family’s bar, now that he’d started helping out there more and more. 

In response, Elliott smirked. “Antheia whiskey, my man. In my bag.”

There they sat, on the floor, backs against the deep navy blue couch, passing the little half-pint liquor bottle between them as they gamed, and laughed, and playfully nudged into each other with halfhearted intent to sabotage.

It was all very classy. 

It wasn’t enough to get drunk off of—not like it was when they were younger, when a few capfuls was a sufficient dose. Enough to oil the gears, though. It always loosened Renee’s tongue; the muscles in her face. And her chamomile tea was long forgotten, left to go cold on the coffee table as the whiskey dwindled steadily away.

At some point, the game outlived its novelty. The coffee table had been pushed up against the TV cabinet, and the boys set up camp on the floor while Renee returned to the sofa. She stared up at the ceiling as low, warm light emanated from the kitchen, with one hand tucked under her head, the other resting on her stomach.

“We should do something,” Jem said, out of the blue. “Something big.”

Though they couldn’t see her, Renee raised an eyebrow. “What do you mean?”

“Before I go,” he clarified. “We should plan something.”

Right. He’d been talking about basic training recently—how he was going to sign up as soon as he turned eighteen. It was still… a while off. But it had become his whole life, and Renee supposed, like her, he was planning ahead. He was taking everything into consideration, from his physique, to his fitness, to… how much time he had left. 

The silence between Renee and Elliott hung heavy in the air, before it was all at once swept under the rug. It wasn’t something either of them had really considered, it seemed. Or… it wasn’t something they wanted to consider. But now, Jem had forced their hand. 

Now, a countdown had started. A countdown on their time with Jem. A countdown between Renee and her little brother.

She swallowed, and her voice was cool and collected when she spoke. “Something big, you say…”

“W-well, the answer is obvious, isn’t it?” Elliott said, and at this stage, Renee had spent enough time with him to know when his enthusiasm overcompensated for an emotion he wasn’t willing to show. He’d say things like, who needs him, anyway about his father, and I’m glad they’re living their dreams about his brothers. And sometimes his voice would wobble and shake, like it did just now, but as long as he believed it, he could convince anyone of anything.

Or at least try to.

Smoke and mirrors, a facade, a mirage… whatever it was called, Elliott was a sweet, sweet boy full to the brim with things better left unsaid.

“What’s obvious?” she asked.

“A road trip, duh!”

Renee could hear the excitement and animation in Jem’s voice. “Dude…” he said, “dude. That’s it. We’re planning a road trip.”

“And…” Renee turned on her side. On the floor, directly next to the sofa was Elliott, with Jem on the far end. “…when are we doing this?”

Jem’s eyes searched the room as he did the mental calculations. “So… the boot camps kick off in Talos every January. When I turn eighteen next July, I’ll be signing up for the following year. So ideally it’d be, like, late summer next year-ish? Before the two of you start college.”

Okay. Renee could get behind that. They spent the next while drafting a hypothetical itinerary. They should go for three days—no, ten. No… a week. A week sounded doable. They’d rent a little campervan and set a different destination for each day. There were ideas thrown around about bringing a portable grill, about going fishing, going hiking. Renee pointed a warning finger their way and told them, under no circumstances, would she be doing all that driving, so they’d better start learning themselves this summer.

“This’ll be good for your survival skills, Jem,” Elliott said, “out there in the wilderness, making fires and building tents… y’know?”

A beat went by, but Jem didn’t respond. “You awake, bro?”

Renee squinted in the dim light at her brother. Sure enough, his eyes were shut. His breathing had evened, features softened, and his lips were slightly parted. “Don’t think so,” she said, her voice lowering to a whisper. He always looked so much younger when he was asleep. In his waking hours, Jem wanted the weight of the world on his shoulders; wanted to be responsible for everything around him—it was always palpable whenever he let go for a little while.

“I mean… it is almost 3am.”

“You tired?” she asked.

Elliott shook his head. “You?”

Not really. Her mind raced, tugging her in all the different directions it wanted to go. Back to the numbers—a safety net where there was always a clear, right answer. Back to the numbers, away from everything else in her life. Everything that she daren’t have a soft-spot for, but did. But did, and would. Finite things that lived in grey areas; impossible things for which she wanted to carve a way.

No, she wasn’t tired. And she told Elliott as much, just without the explanation.

Without needing to explain it, really.

Elliott sat up from the floor, and Renee made room for him on the couch, tucking her legs under her and letting the blanket pool across her lap. It wasn’t often just the two of them. But soon… it’d be a lot of just the two of them, wouldn’t it? And despite the way it would continue without him, Renee had always known that this unlikely friendship probably would never have happened if it weren’t for her brother.

Not an impossibility, though. The universe had a funny way of doing it—of making two people meet; of aligning the stars, having things fall into place, in such a way that could never be simply dreamed up.

Elliott slyly held up the whiskey bottle. “There’s a mouthful each left. Maybe two, if we ration.”

“Uh huh?” She shook her head a little at him. Her smile was still easy. “It’s not my favourite, the whiskey.”

“Oh,” he took the liberty of having the first… half-mouthful? “You don’t want any, then?”

“Didn’t say that.”

Elliott held the bottle out to her. “’Course not.”

“What’re we gonna do when the alcohol’s gone, El?”

She watched his bottom lip bulge out a little as he ran his tongue along the inside, humming in consideration. “Twenty more questions.”

“Twenty more?” She asked, taking a swig, grimacing at the sickly burn. Then she remembered. “Seriously?”

“You got a better idea?”

At that, Renee huffed. She couldn’t say she did. “Alright, then. You first.”

“Okay,” he said, beckoning with his hand for the bottle. She handed it to him. “Where’d you get that hickey?”

Renee’s mouth went agape, her hand cupping against the side of her neck. Fuck. The hoodie hadn’t done its job.

Despite the way her face seared itself red, Renee cleared her throat and gave him a confused look. “What… what hickey?”

“Oh, c’mon…” he said, and—god, Elliott’s shit-eating grin was almost as infuriating as Jem’s. “I’ve been waiting all night to ask. You got it at that party, didn’t you?”

“Elliott…” her tone was warning as she eyed her brother, who was thankfully still fast asleep. She didn’t even want to go to that party. Annika dragged her there a few nights before, said she’d been working too hard; needed to let loose. And look where it landed her. The mark on her neck clearly hadn’t faded enough.

Undeterred, Elliott wouldn’t back down. “Renee…” he said, mimicking her tone. 

They’d been friends too long, she decided. They’d been friends too long if Elliott Witt felt comfortable to be this brazen with her. They’d been friends too long if she was actually considering telling him.

“You breathe a word to another soul, you’re toast,” she said, leveling a finger at him.

Elliott drew an X over his heart with the tip of his own finger. “Hope to die, and all that.”

Heaving the heaviest of sighs, Renee pulled her legs in and folded her arms over her knees. “Yes. I got it at the party.”

Elliott’s eyes were scarily wide as he leaned forward. “From…?”

Renee sank her teeth hard into her lower lip, and Elliott’s grin became a perfect smacking target. 

“It was that Annika girl, wasn’t it?”

The groan that escaped Renee could have—should have—woken the house. “You happy now?”

“So… you like her?”

“No,” Renee shook her head. “I don’t. Not like that. We just… got drunk and hooked up. Typical college stuff, right?”

Typical college stuff, except… Renee wasn’t like that. Wasn’t into drinking, or parties, or hooking up with people at parties.

“I get it,” he said, shrugging a little. “Like when I kissed Jem. We both knew we didn’t have feelings, and we just moved on, y’know?”

Renee nodded. “Yeah. It was like that for us, too. When all was said and done… we agreed not to make things weird.”

“Well,” Elliott grinned playfully, “can’t get any weirder than that, huh?”

She didn’t know what it was—an intense moment alleviated by a dumb joke; sitting across from Elliott at ungodly o’clock, getting honest about something she swore she’d never say out loud to someone else—but Renee barked a laugh that had her immediately clamping her hand over her mouth. It had Elliott doing the same, snorting uncontrollably against his palm as the two of them tried with all their might to suppress what should have been ugly, booming hollers. It didn’t help that they needed to be quiet—it only made it harder to get a grip, as they made a feverish eye contact through tears in their eyes. 

Renee couldn’t remember the last time she laughed like that, where nothing was even funny, but everything was funny. When they finally, finally calmed down, her stomach hurt, like the muscles she used had been lying dormant for years. 

“Your turn,” Elliott said, with a permanent, stupid smile on his face. 

Renee sighed again, feeling thoroughly disarmed. Irrevocably so. She couldn’t decide if she hated it. “Alright, well… I wasn’t planning on telling anyone else that. Ever. So… now you tell me something. Something not even Jem knows. Or your mom.”

Elliott pursed his lips, nodding along. “That seems fair. Okay…” She watched his throat bob with a swallow, watched his mouth open and close, and open again.

“I… I think I’m dyslexic.”

Chapter Text

PHASE ONE, PART III: THE FALLING

Getting into my last year of high school was such a finally moment for me. And Jem. He was ready to kick the whole thing to the curb, but me? I had a bucket list. I was going all in on basketball, I was saving up money from working at the bar to rent a really nice suit for prom, I was researching how to grow out my beard properly…

It felt like I was going in the right direction. Like, I was setting myself up for something good. I was really excited about life—I was coming into my own. Or, at least, I felt like it.

And I didn’t know it at the time, of course, but… these next few years were going to be my best. They were the best, even if there were some bumps in the road, and I look back on them with crazy fondness. 

But, uh… yeah. I guess… sometimes it’s hard to think about them, too. For the same reasons I love ‘em. Y’know?

5:41pm

Renee was already practising her excuses as the dense green thicket arching the old Kómma road gave way to the sparse industrial wasteland that hugged the outskirts of Solace City West. With her fingers curled over ten and two of the steering wheel of her beat-up, 2709 DG Wildlight, Renee gave a quick glance to the street sign as she whizzed past, confirming that this road would take her to the inner city.

“You know how it is,” she said aloud, thumbs tapping against the worn suede, “traffic was crazy over the highway.”

She shook her head, giving herself a little eye-roll. As if the boys would believe any of it. They’d begged her for two whole weeks to come and see this basketball game—the opening game of the school season. When she wouldn’t give them a straight answer, they switched tact from begging to… to infuriating assumption.

It’s great you’re gonna be there, Ren, they said, voices laced with all the impudence of nudging, knowing elbows and unsubtle winking, because this is an important game, us being seniors and all. Glad you’re not missing it!

And they didn’t deserve it, Elliott and Jem. But here she was, doing her best not to let them down.

Or, maybe, it was because she knew she’d never hear the end of it otherwise.

She was running late, though. The game kicked off more than ten minutes ago, and while the road she’d taken had been practically empty the whole stretch, Renee wasn’t going to be taking the same liberties with the rules of the road when it came to driving through the city. 

Much like everything else in the Outlands, driving was one of those things that were largely self-governed. Less governed, more… ruled by etiquette and social norms. There were, of course, the obvious rules that everyone followed: here in Solace, people drove on the left side, and they obeyed automated traffic lights and designated crosswalks. The speed limit was defined by how much of an asshole you wanted to be in any given moment, and the same went for curbside parking and cutting off and overtaking. Driving reflected closely the general culture of Solace, which was one of keeping your nose clean and not causing trouble just for the sake of it. 

Renee liked it that way. And it seemed, for the most part, to work like a well-oiled machine. 

At least she’d avoided learning to drive on her home planet, which was regulated to the point of near-absurdity. It was how a lot of things worked on Typhon: old planet; young population of humans. Many were there for a very specific purpose. Scientific research and development, like her own family. And there were families of entrepreneurs, of teachers, of farmers, with tunnel-like paths laid before them. To be in a planet like Solace was to have the walls of those tunnels torn away, like curtains drawing back, revealing beyond them a world she would have never otherwise considered exploring.

It was clear to her now. Renee had grown up knowing her place in life. But this city stripped that away from her, handed her the pieces, and asked, what will you do with it now? 

It was the same with her brother. He must have felt sentenced to a life he wasn’t made for back home. He must feel free now. 

“Sorry I was late…” she tried again, this time opting for honesty. “Just got caught up with the professor after the last class.” Okay, that wasn’t total honesty. Her last class was at… well, it ended at three. But then Annika wanted to get coffee and study with a few others in the library, and two-and-a-half hours was all the time in the world. Until it wasn’t.

Renee sighed. “This is why I don’t promise anything,” she said, sinking back a little into the seat. If only she had a way to bounce ideas around with herself—like, say something aloud, get feedback for it… give her inner voice an outer voice?

Maybe that sounded stupid.

She was twenty minutes late when she pulled into an empty space in the school’s parking area. Her former school, that was. Ignoring how strange it was to be back, Renee booked it towards the gym, which was separate to the main building. 

Inside, it was a full house. The telescopic bleachers pulled out and occupied with supporters; the space of the court filled by two teams, their movements fluid, like swarms of bees or flocks of birds in flight. The home team’s yellow and purple, interweaving and clashing with the opposition’s black and red. The rhythmic smack of the ball and the high-pitched squeaking of rubber soles against the polished hardwood; the shouts of the crowd, of the players, and of the coaches. Renee ascended the bleachers, spotting Evelyn in the back row and slotting herself into the empty seat next to her.

“Hey,” she said, deciding she didn’t need to use any of her poor excuses on Evelyn, “did I miss anything?”

Evelyn gave Renee a sidelong grin. “Ah, the boy’s didn’t think you’d show. You only missed their disappointed faces.”

“Got here as quick as I could.”

“Trust me… I’ve been doing this a long time,” Evelyn crossed her arms and leaned back against the gym’s wall. “You could show up to 99 out of a hundred games… but it’s that one game you missed that they’ll always remember!”

Renee let out a little laugh. She looked out, scanning the faces out on the court. In a team of five, it wasn’t difficult to find the two of them. Her brother played point guard and found great satisfaction in calling the shots. In fairness, he was a good leader and the rest of the team were good listeners. Elliott was the team’s small forward, and for someone who constantly groaned about running in any other circumstance, he was in his element racing back and forth between offence and defence. 

He’d explained it to her before… that his brain couldn’t stick the lack of a real goal when it came to straight-up cardio. Renee supposed she could get behind that. Besides, Elliott was clearly putting the work in. There were moments, though brief, where he stood still, where Renee could see the way his chest puffed with exertion; the way some of his curls stuck to his forehead, and the way the veins on his temples pulsed under his skin.

Lately, Renee had been struck, every time she saw him, by just how much he’d changed in what felt like no time at all. The way she watched in real-time as the boyishness faded, bit by bit, from his features. As he began to carry himself differently, more self-assuredly. She remembered telling him that she could hardly have an opinion on him because she didn’t know him at all… and now she knew him well. Really well, in fact. Renee knew of an intellect that had been overshadowed by how scatterbrained he could be. She knew of a sensitivity and a delicateness that was often shielded by humour and deflection.

She knew him well now, and sometimes she felt like she could see right through him, like his entire being was made of glass. And Renee didn’t know what to do with any of it.

“Well, I can’t imagine El would be dragging you to his college games if he plays on the team, right?”

It was the first time Renee could ever remember hearing Evelyn’s laughter, and immediately clocking it as… false. It sounded wrong coming from her, and it gave Renee pause as she glanced Evelyn’s way. Evelyn was looking out at the court as the laughter died, as she let out a sigh and hugged her arms around herself a little tighter. But even so, despite the sombreness that overtook her, her expression remained light as a feather. 

“You know,” Evelyn said, still not looking her way, “I think you’re at that age where… I can be frank with you, Renee.”

All Renee could do was nod.

“When my older boys left, I took an indefinite leave from my career to keep the Lounge afloat. My job in holotechnology paid better—much better—but the bar was always a great source of secondary income. There used to always be someone from the family who was able to run it. My husband, but he’s… he’s doing his own thing. My brothers, but the wars have kept them occupied. Cousins who’ve moved to other planets; aunts and uncles who are too old to work… you get the picture.”

Renee nodded again, but she didn’t like where this was going.

“I kept waiting for someone to be able to take it on again, so that I could return to work. It’s… barely enough money to get by, so having those combined incomes would keep us out of the red. I…” she shook her head, shrugging to herself, “I don’t want to sentence Elliott to a life he wasn’t made for. I want him to go to college—to follow his dreams, like his brothers. But… I can’t imagine a way to afford it without bringing hardship.”

At Evelyn’s words, Renee could feel the stitching of some small part of her heart coming undone. Going to college was all Elliott could talk about these days. But she understood the gravity of Evelyn’s words—Renee herself wouldn’t even be where she was without having earned her scholarship.

“I’m going to break it to him soon,” she continued, “I just need to make sure there isn’t another way, something I haven’t thought of yet.”

“Right,” Renee said with a frown, “I understand.”

And she did. It could break her heart all it wanted, but that was the harsh reality of the situation. She couldn’t even imagine how Evelyn was feeling. Elliott was her whole world. Her golden boy. 

“Anyway, you and Jem are welcome to tag along home with us afterwards…” she said, a real smile returning. An excited, eyebrow-waggling smile. “I’ve got a surprise waiting for Elliott.”

“I’d like that,” she said, before refocusing on the game. The two teams, the Leviathans (Levis for short) and the Wingmen, were neck-and-neck on the scoreboard. There were mere seconds left in the quarter.

 And this, funnily enough, was where time began to slow down. 

The tallest player on the opposing team, ball in hand, pulled their arm back and launched it across the court. Renee had hung around Jem and Elliott enough to know this was called a baseball pass. Her brother raised his arms and called out for Elliott to intercept the pass. With a running start, Elliott bent his knees and sprung into the air. He didn’t see the other player—the player for whom the pass was intended—doing the same. The two of them collided midair, one skull clashing against the other. 

Time resumed to its normal speed as the two of them fell in a heap onto the floor, dropping like bricks thrown from a rooftop. The gymnasium rumbled with the collective, cringing ooh of the crowd. The other kid sat up, rubbing their head gingerly, but looking otherwise unhurt. 

Elliott, on the other hand, didn’t move, apart from covering the lower half of his face with his hands as he lay crumpled on the ground.

6:58pm

It all happened in a whirlwind. 

The game was halted; Renee and Evelyn rushed down from the bleachers to see what was going on. She watched as the coach managed to pry Elliott’s hands away from his face, exposing a gushing nosebleed and a deep gash running diagonally across the bridge of his nose. The coach asked Elliott if it hurt to the touch, and with involuntary tears in his eyes, Elliott nodded, adding that the bone seemed to crackle under his fingertips.

He needed to go to a hospital. Renee didn’t know if the shock had rendered his mother completely dumbfounded, but a cloud of fog seemed to overcome her mind. She began to stammer through her words, patting the pockets of her jeans for her car keys, and then wondering aloud whether she’d driven or walked to the school. 

And that was when Renee kicked into action. She stepped forward and began to help Elliott up, telling the coach she could drive him. She used to be Renee’s PE teacher, and she was active enough in the classes, and she somehow remembered Renee’s name. Jem appeared and asked to be substituted so he could go with them.

That’s where they were now. Silva Medical Centre. Renee sat with her brother in the waiting area while Evelyn accompanied Elliott to see the doctor. His nose was, without a shadow of a doubt, broken. They’d been gone a while.

Renee hoped they wouldn’t be too much longer.

“Okay, I’ll do it slowly this time…” Jem stuck his tongue out the side of his mouth as he drummed the same pattern repeatedly against his thighs. Renee didn’t want to be here—not one bit—and Jem… Jem knew that better than anyone. And he was trying to keep her mind occupied in his own, albeit very annoying, little way. He came to a stop and looked at her. “Well?”

Renee blew an exhausted raspberry as she shrugged. “I don’t know. Creep?”

Jem let out a little tsk. “Take On Me!” He began drumming at full speed again, humming obnoxiously along to his own beat. “See?”

Renee’s head fell back against the wall behind her. Once, twice. “Oh, silly me.”

“C’mon,” he said, elbowing her across the armrest, “you’ll miss this once I’m gone!”

With her head still resting agaisnt the wall, she turned it to face him. “Jem… not what I wanna talk about.”

He let out a sighing hum. “You never do, Ren. You never do.”

No, no I don’t. As far as she was concerned, Renee had all the time in the world with her brother, and nothing could change that. There were no time limits, no expiration dates, no final chapters. Maybe it wasn’t good or healthy to think that way. 

No, maybe not.

The door to Elliott’s room cracked open, and Evelyn poked her head out. “He’s all set—doctor’s keeping him for an hour or two to make sure he’s not concussed or about to pass out, but you two are welcome to come in now.”

Renee stood, though it was the last place she wanted to go. As they made their way, she felt Jem giving her shoulder a little reassuring squeeze.

How could she ever say goodbye to that?

“Woof, bro,” Jem said as they entered the room, “aren’t you a sorry sight?”

Jem wasn’t wrong. Sitting on the bed was Elliott, his nose covered in gauze and medical tape; bruises forming under his eyes. Despite looking—and definitely feeling—like hell, Elliott beamed when he saw Renee and Jem.

And she studied his face as a wave of something she couldn’t quite place washed over her. He was okay. She hadn’t considered the idea that he wasn’t until she walked into the room—she was too focused on… on herself, and how she was feeling about being at the hospital. Too focused on not being eight years old again. 

On not being fourteen years old again.

But he was okay. And that was enough for her.

He gestured enthusiastically at his face, teeth clenched in a wild grin as he spoke. “Doc said the cut’s gonna scar. I’m gonna look the coolest.”

Renee couldn’t help but roll her eyes as she let out a breathy laugh. It felt somewhat as more of a concealed sigh of relief. “How glass-half-full of you.” She took a seat next to Evelyn, before asking, “are you okay?”

“Yeah,” he said with a nonchalant shrug, “I’m good. Thanks… y’know… for bringing me here.”

Renee’s smile was the thinnest of lines. She lowered her head a little. “Of course, El. Any time. I guess…” she raised her eyes to meet his once more, “I guess I wouldn’t have been around to do it if you two hadn’t been badgering me nonstop.”

“Guess we can thank ourselves, then,” Jem said, winking and shooting finger guns at her.

Renee wasn’t sure which of them infected the other with that gesture. But she was glad to have shown up, even if it was less to do with it being her own decision… more to do with fate nudging her along wherever she needed to be. 

The door opened again. Renee, of course, expected it to be the doctor. 

But it wasn’t. 

The first came through, his mouth stretching into a wide, lopsided grin as his eyes landed on Elliott. Two more filed in behind him. Two of the same person—twins. 

Three dark heads of hair, one’s skin a deep olive, like Elliott’s; the two other’s a little fairer, like Evelyn’s. 

Renee caught Elliott’s expression as he laid eyes on them. She was sure she’d never see anything like it again—that surprise, that elation, those stars in his eyes as he pushed himself off the bed and ran towards them. Broken bones be damned.

Roger, Ricky, Lonnie.

Chapter Text

Yeah, remember how I said there were bumps in the road? I’m sure you know where this is going… 

My ma never actually brought it up with me… the whole college thing. Right around the time I was supposed to start applying for places, I overheard her talking to Roger about it. I never knew that… my ma was in debt because of my dad. Nobody would loan to her. ‘Course, there’s a lot of shady loansharks in the city, and—yeah, that’s the part I overheard, it was my brother tryin’ to talk her out of it. Can you believe that? She was considering going through some… some syndicate… t-to put me through college.

I couldn’t let that happen.

So I changed my mind; said… said I wanted to take a year off school to work and earn money. I thought I’d save up to put myself through, eventually. But you know how it is. One year turns into two. Two to three. And… and here I am, I guess.

3:11pm

And really, everything was fine. 

“Now… shake it! Shake that margarita like it owes you money!”

The classic margarita. The Paradise Lounge’s recipe for this particular cocktail called for one-and-a-half ounces of reposado tequila, an ounce of orange liqueur, and three-quarters of an ounce of freshly squeezed lime juice. 

Elliott had started the process by filling the cocktail shaker halfway with ice cubes, before adding the three main ingredients. And now, his face twisted into a knot as he did his eldest brother’s bidding, bringing the sleek gunmetal container to the space between his shoulder and the side of his head. 

Last week was his and Jem’s high school graduation. They did a whole celebration at the house… Elliott’s ma, his brothers; Jem and Ethan came over. Not Renee, though. He hadn’t seen her since before the ceremony—which he understood, she was busy with her finals. Now, exactly seven days later, Elliott stood between Roger, Ricky, and Lonnie as they continued their months-long endeavour to coach him through the running of his family’s bar. Jem sat watching from a stool across the counter, his chin resting on crossed forearms. 

While shaking vigorously, Elliott’s eyes darted constantly Roger’s way, searching his expression for signs of approval. He stood, feet shoulder-width apart and planted firmly on the ground with his arms folded, head cocked a little as he watched Elliott. The beading of his dogtags disappeared under the neckline of his t-shirt, which was tucked neatly into his dark belted jeans. His face at first gave nothing away. Then, he began to slowly nod.

Roger was a fully-fledged adult before the three of them left. He was twenty-five years old now, but his time away seemed to have weathered him far beyond that. It was the same with Rick and Lonnie, both almost twenty-two, standing slouched against the lip of the large, curving bar of the Paradise Lounge. Of course, Elliott had seen plenty of photos over the years, so their changes didn’t come as a shock. 

No, not their appearance. It was their presence.

Elliott himself was going to be eighteen soon, but his brothers were unequivocally men. Roger looked just like their dad, right down to his beard and the way he wore his hair. The twins looked more like their ma, with buzz-cuts and matching perfect smiles in place of unshapely bowl-cuts and braces. They had visible muscles, tattooed skin; calloused palms and knuckles. They had experience in their eyes, and they carried themselves with grace.

The magnitude of it all was not something that could be conveyed in a photo.

“Okay,” Roger nodded once firmly, and Elliott found himself back in the present, ceasing his intense cocktail shaking and blowing out a breath. “Good job, now pour her nice and easy…” he said, as Elliott popped the shaker open and began tipping the contents into the conical glass. He took care in not letting any of the ice cubes inside slip out, and heard a chuckle from Ricky as he stuck his tongue out the side of his mouth in concentration. He poured until Roger said perfect.

“He’s a natural!” said Lonnie, one side of his mouth curving into a grin. The twins had always been such… tricksters growing up, and Elliott was often at the receiving end of their pranks, being the youngest. Now—for the most part, anyway—the mischief had gone from their eyes. They were being nice to him… encouraging him.

They were treating him like an equal.

He always wanted to be like them. Even now, when he felt so much smaller, so much slighter; so much younger, just by being around them. Even next to Jem, who… well. His brothers weren’t military—not really. But… he knew that with their being done with school, his and Jem’s paths had fast diverged from one another. It was a fork in the road that Elliott had seen coming for miles, but it somehow managed to feel as though it came from nowhere all the same. And Jem… he seemed to regard Elliott’s brothers with total awe. The same awe with which Elliott regarded them. Even if Elliott never wanted to do what his brothers did.

And Jem Blasey was off to the Militia soon, and there was nothing that could sway his decision to do so. There was a selfish part of Elliott that wanted his best friend, his… his fourth brother… around forever. Elliott wasn’t sure how big that part of him really was; how much it overshadowed the part of him that felt genuine joy that Jem was doing what he wanted to do. 

What he’d set out to do.

And Elliott… Elliott could honestly say he wasn’t even jealous. He’d thought about it. He’d considered that holotech had been his dream since he was a little boy, when he’d see his ma come through the door each evening with a thick briefcase full of blueprints and prototypes. When he used to sit at the big round kitchen table with her, and she’d explain how the prototypes worked in age-appropriate ways to him. 

As he got older, her explanations and demonstrations grew more in-depth, and she eventually began to show him the math behind it all. Seeing the application of the numbers; turning them into something tangible and functional… it had Elliott hooked. It all hooked him—the way she’d ruffle his curls and call him her little protégée; the way she’d sometimes come home with a problem from work left “unsolved” so he could help her find the answer.

Roger patted him on the back. “You’ll be running this place in no time, little man.”

At that, Elliott stifled a sigh with a halfhearted huff of laughter and a plastered smile. This was his lot, he supposed, and his older brothers couldn’t have timed their return more perfectly. Helping out at home while their ma slowly got back into working; showing Elliott the ropes at the Lounge, because he would be running this place, whether he liked it or not. And he kept reminding himself that this was his lot. This was his lot. So he’d better keep the moping to a minimum. He’d better come to terms, and quick. As far as his mom was concerned, this was what he wanted. And he did want it—insofar as sparing her from drowning in debt. 

But she didn’t have to know about the fine-print embedded into his decision not to pursue his dream.

His face must have given something away, though, because Roger frowned a little at him. “Don’t be nervous,” he said, patting him again, “we’re here for… for the next while, anyway. So there’s plenty of time to get you prepared. We’ll be here every step of the way, Ellie.”

They knew, to an extent, how badly Elliott wanted for things to be different. If they hadn’t cornered him after his announcement that he no longer wanted to go to college, Elliott would have kept the truth from them. But they did, and they knew. Roger telling him they were there every step of the way was about more than just the bar. Elliott understood that. 

“I know,” he said, finally letting out that sigh. “Thanks, guys.”

“Look, Ellie, I’m sorry. About everything. I…” Roger leaned back against the cocktail station, looking out over the Lounge. It was off-peak, and the few patrons that were there were still quietly content, slowly nursing their drinks. “I feel partly responsible for this whole thing. I didn’t know, joining the Corps… what would happen.”

Roger glanced briefly at Jem, head still resting on his arms. He meant about the Battle of Typhon. About Harmony. But he didn’t say it.

He didn’t need to.

“We didn’t expect the job to take years,” he said, “and now… you’re paying the price for that. I’m sorry, y’know?”

This time, it was Elliott who reached out to place a hand on his brother’s shoulder. He thought back to the last time he’d done something like that, when he was a kid, when he’d have to reach up instead of out. “It’s not your fault. I don’t blame you… don’t blame anyone. Just how it had to be. Besides…” Elliott knew in his heart he didn’t have to add this last part, but some small, yet powerful, self-loathing part of him couldn’t resist. “I probably wouldn’t have gotten far in college.”

He adorned the statement with a wink and a grin, trying to soften it, but all three of his brothers—hell, even Jem—each responded with stern looks. 

“Nah,” Lonnie shook his head at Elliott, “don’t even. You would’ve kicked its ass, Ellie.”

Roger hummed in agreement. “Mom showed us your notebooks. You’ve been studying holotech on the side, and you’re good at it.” He pressed a tight fist against Elliott’s chest, adding, “so shut it.”

It was true. Elliott had spent many nights sat up in bed, reading his mom’s old textbooks by the dull red glow of his bedside lava lamp. Elliott didn’t have the best grades in school. No matter how hard he tried to gamify the other subjects for himself to make them more interesting, no matter how hard he pushed himself through his lapses in concentration; how many times he’d gently beaten the side of his skull, willing the information to go in. To just go in. 

It wasn’t like that with holotech. He couldn’t get enough of it.

“Don’t forget about the tinkering,” Jem chimed in, lifting his head, “the way you figured out how to make those projections of yourself? C’mon, man!”

They shared a look. He wasn’t jealous of Jem. Not at all. It was another emotion he couldn’t quite fit neatly into a box. Something like shame, or embarrassment. Something that made him feel like a fraud, or… or—

Inwardly, Elliott wanted to disappear through the floor at the compliments. Outwardly, he allowed himself a tiny, sheepish smile. His graduation was hard. It was hard to be happy, and it was hard to keep it together in front of everyone. “I gotta tell myself something like that… I guess.”

“Alright…” Roger said quietly. Resolutely. “Alright, look… let’s make a deal, Ellie.”

Elliott raised an eyebrow. “A deal?”

“Yeah. You do this—keep this place running. Keep it running ‘till our next stint ends. And when we get back, we’re back for good. We’ll take the bar over from you, and you can go and follow your dreams.”

Roger’s words were single beam of light cracking its way through the end of a long, unending, caved-in tunnel. What had been dished out as a life sentence became shortened to just a few years. Elliott’s mind raced at the possibility. At the opportunity. 

Just a few years. He could do just a few years.

“Wait…” he said, mouth agape, “really?”

Roger exchanged a look with the twins. He so obviously decided this on the spot, because the twins also exchanged a look between themselves. When they refocused on Roger, they both nodded at the same time.

He smiled at them, then at Elliott. “Yeah. Swear on it.”

“It’s only fair,” Ricky shrugged, “we got to follow ours.”

As much as Elliott wanted to push back, to say… I can’t ask this of you… he couldn’t. He’d never win that argument. And maybe… this time, Elliott wanted to be the selfish one. 

This time, he had to be the selfish one. He couldn’t bear the alternative.

“Cool,” he said, quietly, almost to himself. “Cool, that… yeah. Deal.”

It was silent for a beat. Then, Jem spoke up again, his head falling against his open palm. “Hey, you know, I… I might have to wait a year before I can even enlist.”

“Huh, why?” Roger asked.

“It’s this stupid bootcamp thing,” Jem explained, shaking his head in frustration, “like, I have to be eighteen before I can sign up. It kicks off every January, and they only have so many spaces for rookies. It’s May now… I still have to wait another two months, and it’s filling up real fast this year.”

Roger chuckled. “Kid… who told you that you had to be eighteen to sign up?”

Jem’s face soured with confusion. “Uh… what? It’s the rule. They don’t recruit minors.”

“You can’t be a minor when the bootcamp starts,” Ricky said, “you could’ve signed up months ago.”

With that, Jem’s expression was wiped clean. “What? Oh my god!”

“Y’know,” Roger said, “the recruitment centre is on the way to Little Mouse. You could sign up in person… and they’ll perform your physical exam. Two birds, one stone? We could drive you,” he offered, before looking Elliott’s way, “if Ellie doesn’t mind running solo for a while.”

It wouldn’t be Elliott’s first time without supervision. That, plus… Jem never mentioned this had been weighing on him. But now that he did, and he saw the reignited hope in Jem’s eyes… how could he mind? 

He told them as much, and he watched from his post as the four of them left together. Really, he knew that Jem was like his brothers in so many ways that Elliott wasn’t. And that was okay. It was perhaps why Elliott loved Jem the way he did.

It was still a quiet period, so Elliott busied himself with flipping through the binder of cocktail recipes his brothers had previously been going over with him. Luckily, mixology was a legitimate interest of his, so he didn’t hate the idea of toiling his way through this booklet. 

He wasn’t sure how much time had passed before he heard the bell above the entrance jingle once more. He looked up, readying his customer service persona. He was getting good at that—didn’t mind interacting with people at all. A lot of the regulars knew him already; had since he was just a kid.

But there, at the threshold, stood Renee, sizing up the Lounge for the very first time. Right. She’d never been inside before, had she?

And Elliott was pretty sure he could count on one hand how many time’s he’d seen her with her hair all the way down. Most often it was up in a neat bun—or, as neat as it could be, with her shoulder-length cut—and other times she couldn’t be bothered with the neatness. Sometimes, she had it in a half-up-half-down sort of style. But for as long as he’d known her, she always had those bangs framing her face. She’d mentioned once that she cut her own hair; that she was weirdly precious about it, and just kept it trimmed. 

But today, it was just down. It was down, and she was wearing a leather jacket, and light-wash blue jeans, and thick combat boots. And she smiled at him when they met eyes.

Elliott made an effort to keep his jaw in place. 

If he had been wearing boots like that, he would’ve made a thudding, creaking racket as he crossed the old floorboards of the Paradise Lounge towards the bar. But Renee’s footfall was almost completely silent as she made her way towards him. Elliott realised that there was a tinge of sadness colouring that smile of hers as she neared.

It was probably directed at him. He hated that. 

She came to a stop across from him, slotting herself between two bar stools and leaning her elbows on the counter. “Thought everyone else was here?” 

“Just left,” he said, thumbing absently at the laminated page he’d landed on. Martinis, and all the various forms they came in. He knew it was her last day of finals, that she was free for the summer, but he asked anyway. “What’re you doing here?”

“Came to see you,” she said simply, her face unreadable as ever. Elliott sucked in his lower lip. “Wanted to say congrats in person.”

Elliott smiled, just a little. “Could say the same to you… b-breezing your way through this year. Can I get you a drink, smarty-pants?”

Renee shrugged, before sliding onto a stool. “My experience with alcohol is college party punch bowls and whatever dregs you used to sneak out of this place. I don’t know what I really like.”

“Beer, then?”

“Spirit’s more my style.”

Elliott hummed, grateful for the distraction and the company. He felt his smile turning realer by the second. “Never have a cocktail?”

“Never a professional one.”

He eyed the drink he’d made minutes prior, and slid it her way. “Be my taste-tester, then.”

Renee took the first sip, and it struck him, then. They weren’t kids anymore. Yes, he was seventeen, but… they used to hang out at each others houses, playing video games at hers, shooting hoops at his. They used to hang out at the pool where Renee would spend her summers working. He used to pass her in the corridors at school and wave if he managed to catch her eye. Now, he was out of school, working a full-time job. Now, she was halfway through college, driving herself around, and spending her free time drinking at a bar. Now, her brother—his best friend—was gearing up to begin his military service. 

And Elliott was still a kid, but he already missed being a kid. 

“So,” she said after a few minutes, “what’s going on, El?”

He’d been lost in thought. Had been quite a few times today. Well… had been for longer than that, really. But all Elliott did was brace himself against the bar, cool as anything as he cocked his head and nonchalantly asked her what she meant.

She tilted her chin downwards, regarding him through her lashes. She was unblinking. “El.”

“I’m fine,” he said, his teeth working at his lip again. It was reminiscent of the sadness from before. No matter how hard he tried to throw walls up around Renee, they were always built on these shaky foundations; she could knock them over with the gentlest of touches. He’d lie to her even when he knew there was no use. Sometimes she’d let it go. 

Today wasn’t one of those days.

“Really, I’m fine. Roger made me a promise… just before he left.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. My brothers are gonna take over the bar after their next deployment ends. I’m… I’m gonna save up for the tuition. I’m gonna keep studying on the side. I’m gonna make it work.”

Renee’s eyes were on her drink as she turned it in place. “I’ll help you.”

“How?”

She lifted one shoulder. “However I can. Need help with studying… need help here on a busy night… you have my number.”

“You…” he pushed his curls from his eyes, “y’know you don’t have to. You’ve got a full enough plate as it is.”

Renee lifted the glass, the rim touching her lips. She glanced at him as she said, “didn’t ask if I had to,” before taking another sip and taking her time swallowing. “This is alright.”

He wished he could figure out how she did that—glide seamlessly from deep to trivial in the same breath. Instead, in the moment, he chose to indulge himself with an openly fond look her way. “Just alright?”

“Imagine I’m holding a scorecard with a four… maybe a five on it.”

“Ah,” he didn't take it personally. He made the drink perfectly—his brother said as much. “A challenge, then. I’ll make you something different next time. Keep going ‘til we land on the perfect drink.”

Renee shook her head in amusement. “Deal.”

“And hey…” he shifted, leaning down to her level, lowering his voice, “In return… for offering to help me, I mean, I’ll... I'll do something. For you.”

“What’s that?” she asked, eyebrow raised. 

“Keep you company. After Jem’s gone. I know what it’s like… the loneliness, I mean, after your siblings go away.”

When Renee looked away, down to a knot in the wood of the bar’s surface, a wave of anxiety coursed through Elliott. He’d said the wrong thing. Definitely said the wrong thing. Definitely overstepped some invisible boundary that he'd never quite been able to pinpoint with her. But she only sighed before meeting his gaze once more.

“I’d like that.”

Chapter Text

It’s hard, y’know. Telling our story in snapshots. It’s hard to remember; make out the little details. I worry a lot that I misremember stuff, so this has been a hercull—hercullenenin eff—

It hasn’t been easy.

But—um… this? This one’s burned into my memory. Like—they’ll dig me up a thousand years from now and there’ll be an imprint on the inside of my skull because… for as long as I lived… my brain had this memory on repeat. All day, every day.

I remember the song that was playing, I remember, uh… I remember what you were wearing. What I was wearing. I remember how it felt to…

11:10pm

“Hey, monkey, what’s your ETA?”

All the city lights had been keeping Renee from falling asleep at the wheel before her dad’s call came through. Not that she really would, just… it had been a long day. She’d been helping out at the LU open day, for mostly selfish reasons that involved networking and scoring possible internships for her third year.

The university provided a list of companies and IMC-run facilities for students to sign on with, and she had been busying herself throughout the summer with narrowing down her options.

“I’m…” she glanced at her car’s console GPS, “five—oh, no—four minutes out. Sorry I’m so late.”

She was looking for something more abstract. Something less tangible, less concrete. So many of her classmates wanted to get into Lastimosa Armory, which was the obvious choice, or Vinson Dynamics, or Chevrex, or Hammond Robotics. Internships centred on engineering workshops; playing minor roles in major projects. Naturally, she was supposed to choose the organisation that best suited her career goals. Which, of course, begged the question of… what, exactly, were her career goals?

Her dad’s voice was a crisp crackle through the car’s speaker. “It’s okay, there’s dinner for you if you’re hungry.”

Her career goals were also something less tangible and concrete. It wasn’t anything to do with manufacturing, or designing. It wasn’t even anything to do with philosophising, despite her keen interest in the intersection of philosophy and physics. She supposed… whatever existed in the in-between of the two ends of the spectrum… that was likely where her goals lay. 

But the mention of food made her stomach growl. She’d only had time for snacks throughout the day; hadn’t had a chance to sit down for a proper meal. “Starving,” she told him, while making a left turn. It was the height of summer, and the sun had only really set a little while ago, and the light pollution of Solace City had her looking up at a deep, dark blue starless sky. Tired, hungry; her social battery strained beyond its normal limits. The idea of a Friday night at home with her dad was a welcome one. No Jem—it was actually his and Elliott’s prom night, which reminded her…

“How are the boy’s doing?”

The beat of silence that followed had her frowning. “Not so good. You didn’t hear, then?”

“Hear what?”

“Well,” her dad sighed, and she glanced at the GPS again as the number four fell to a three. “Elliott… he couldn’t go. Evelyn is stuck overnight on the other side of the city for a conference, and his brothers are away for the weekend at some impromptu training… thing. Left no one to work the bar on a busy Friday night.”

Renee’s stomach dropped. The prom… Elliott had been really looking forward to it; couldn’t stop talking about it, couldn’t stop showing off the suit he had rented. It didn’t take a genius to figure out why—it was the last thing standing between him and his new life as a working adult. His last night to be a kid, to be carefree. 

And now… it was just one more thing he’d had to sacrifice.

“God...” Renee’s mind and mouth were working. Her lips twisted into a knot as she glanced at the GPS again, at the imminent right turn. The right turn would lead her home. The road straight ahead would lead to the Paradise Lounge. Her dad was at home. He’d probably been waiting to eat with her. Her eyes flicked between the console and the road, at the green traffic lights.

The time to make a decision was now.

And Renee wasn’t privy to the forces at play. What made someone choose to turn right or continue straight ahead was up to fate, really, or… or if fate was just the word people used to describe snowballing choices upon choices all culminating into one moment… it wasn’t for she, as a human being, to know. What she did know was that her fingers had been hovering over the indicator, and then they returned to their place, curled around the steering wheel, as she drove straight through he traffic light as it changed from green to amber. 

“Dad, I… I won’t be home just yet.”

Her dad chuckled softly on the other end. Renee didn’t have to see him to feel the knowing in it. It could have helped to ease the guilt rippling softly through her as she drove past the Ferril Square road sign, at the thought of her dad sitting alone in that sixth-floor apartment. It could have. 

“I understand, monkey. Drive safely.”

Elliott watched from behind the bar as Jem lead the last of the patrons out. He said goodnight to them before turning the window shutters over and wedging the doorstop under as he closed the doors. He couldn’t help the immense guilt he felt. Jem had abandoned the prom to come and help him, and Elliott wouldn’t allow himself to believe him, no matter how many times he said he was happy to do it; that he didn’t care about the prom if Elliott wasn’t there enjoying it, too.

On some level, Elliott knew he really did mean that. Neither of them had dates, in fact… it felt like somewhat of an unspoken thing that they were each others. They were already at the dance when Elliott got the call from his mom. He didn’t have to leave, she stressed. She was only calling to tell him she was stuck on the other side of town and wouldn’t be home until the next day. But the damage had been done—Elliott’s thoughts immediately spiralled into the inevitable consequences of losing out on a Friday night’s takings. 

His responsibility. His ma’s debts that he wasn’t supposed to know about. 

Jem turned to face him, his tie hanging loose around his neck and a tired smile on his face. “Mission success,” he said, shoving his hands into his pockets. He’d spent a lot of the summer so far working out and building up his strength, and it was beginning to show in his silhouette.

“Mission success,” Elliott echoed, popping the cash register open and pulling the coin counter out from a shelf underneath the bar. Jem seemed to linger, not totally sure what he should do next. “You can go, man. I can finish up here.”

“Nah, can I sweep or wipe tables or something? I don’t mind helping out.”

Elliott’s thumb smoothed over a handful of coins, and they clinked softly against each other in his palm. That, he did believe. As soon as Elliott announced he had to go to work, Jem was by his side, declaring that he was going, too. Elliott had given him a quick crash-course on pulling the lagers and the ales and the stouts; on pouring measures of liquor and glasses of wine. He didn’t even have to ask Jem to keep up with clearing tables and keeping on top of the dishes. He just did it. Did it without complaint, did it with a smile on his face.

Did it with this look in his eye. Elliott felt as though, at any given moment, Jem was seeing right through him. Even through Elliott’s best attempts at seeming unbothered by the whole thing. 

He was bothered. Of course he was bothered. But it didn’t matter. This was his lot, after all.

“Seriously,” Elliott argued, flashing his easiest smile and his most convincing tone of voice. He didn’t know why he bothered when Jem clearly didn’t buy it. Force of habit, maybe. “Really appreciate your help tonight, man. But it won’t take me long.”

Jem shook his head. The Blasey’s were a stubborn family, but Jem understood when to back down, tonight of all nights. “Alright, alright,” he reached for his blazer on the coat rack by the door. “Look. Tonight was fun. Way better than some stupid prom.”

Elliott tried not to let his smile falter. In truth, he was really looking forward to that stupid prom. And now it was another kick in the teeth. He'd been taking a lot of those lately.

"Heh... yeah." It was noncommittal, but it was the best Elliott could come up with. "G'night, man."

Jem backed away towards the door once more, giving his signature finger-guns gesture, before kicking the doorstop away and leaving Elliott on his own. 

In the safety of his own company, Elliott finally allowed himself to truly wallow in his rented suit. He knew his ma would've never held it against him if he chose his night of fun. But as he counted up those takings, he knew they couldn't have really gone without them. He knew he couldn’t have lived with the selfishness, and one night of good memories was as good as worthless next to the money in his hands.

Once he was finished counting, he fished his keys out and headed for the door. It was late enough that he was considering staying up in the loft again, and Elliott was pondering the idea of someday living there full time when he slid the key into the lock. There were a lot of boxes of old stuff belonging to his grandpa up there, but there was also a bed, and this old plump couch, and something resembling a kitchen. He figured he could renovate it over time. Make a little project of it.

Then came a knock from the other side. Puzzled, he opened the door. Maybe Jem had forgotten something...

"Renee?"

There was a fleeting moment where her hands were curled into fists at her sides, where her lower lip was drawn between her teeth. Where she looked almost... shy? Or nervous? He blinked incredulously, and it was gone, and Renee offered him a small, lopsided grin.

"I heard about prom," she said, stepping forward. Elliott moved back, opening the door wider to let her in without really knowing he was doing it. "I passed Jem on the way here. He said you were bummed."

Elliott cupped the back of his head with his free hand, closing the door behind him as he laughed humorlessly. He couldn’t, for the life of him, figure out why she was here, at this time of night. Not when there were probably—definitely—so many other things she could be doing instead. "Me, bummed? I don't... I'm not bummed. I was excited about it, sure, but... y'know. Shit happens."

Renee raised a disbelieving eyebrow. And he guessed that was all it took. He thought back to the look in Jem’s eye—the one he’d had all night. The constant, silent you good? I’m here for you, you know that right? He thought about the ease with which he deflected it with a grin, with looking away and focusing on the next customer in line. In fairness to Jem, they hadn’t had one quiet moment all evening to really hash it out. But as soon as they did… well, Elliott had all but shooed him away, hadn’t he?

He didn’t know why he did that. And he especially didn’t know why one disbelieving eyebrow from Renee had those defences coming undone.

Defeated, Elliott found the nearest chair and fell back into it. "Just... wanted something to show for finishing school, I guess."

Renee kept moving towards the bar. “Whisky, then?”

“You’ll have one too? Or, whatever you want. I know its not your favourite.”

Renee shrugged. "If that would make you feel better."

A moment later, she was sliding a glass his way and sitting across from him. Elliott took a sip, and it burned sweetly the whole way down. "So, what, you came here to feed me alcohol? You got an agenda?"

“If trying to cheer you up is considered an agenda,” she said, swirling her own glass in her hand, “then sure.”

“Is…” he stared at his drink. Something, something… you won’t find the answers at the bottom of the glass. But he looked anyway. “Is that why you came here? Am I just the guy that needs cheering up now?”

“We’re all that guy at some point.”

Elliott understood her meaning. He remembered a younger Renee Blasey, going through all she was going through, and finding her way out the other side of it. And he saw her now. Somehow she had changed so much; somehow she hadn’t changed one bit. 

“Well,” he said, “you know whisky makes me cry. That what you want?”

“Do you need to cry?” she asked, tone all-serious.

Elliott frowned, feigning consideration as he tilted his head from side to side. Then took another swig. "It could happen."

"I am sorry," she told him, even if she was laughing a little at the same time, "it really sucks."

"Yeah…” Elliott shrugged. No point in pretending otherwise. “I... I know I didn't really have a reason for being so excited about it. I didn't have, like, a date or anything, and me and Jem were probably gonna end up dancing with each other..."

That last part was a joke. Kind of, sort of. Who knew how things would’ve played out?

“I’ll dance with you.”

"...so I guess—" Elliott paused, then, and shook his head. "Huh?"

Renee, normally pale, went white as a ghost before flushing bright red, betraying her calm, measured tone of voice. "I—uh, I said... I mean, I know you were looking forward to the stupid prom..." she stuttered, and in any other scenario, Elliott would have mocked her for sounding just like her brother.

This was not any other scenario. Elliott’s mouth went dry, and his heart began to hammer through his ears.

"You want to dance with me?"

And just as it was with the fleeting nervousness he saw in her at the Lounge’s entrance, Renee’s own mask had slipped perfectly back into place as she began to stand. “Yes. C’mon, before I change my mind.”

There was already music playing quietly from the old jukebox in the corner. Renee was taking steps backward into the centre of the large room, tilting her head to the side in silent question. Somehow, Elliott found himself springing to action, and he found his feet before moving tentatively towards her. The mask faltered, just the tiniest bit, and Elliott swore he saw a shyness in her expression as she held a hand out in front of her.

He swallowed thickly as Renee curled his fingers into her palm and pulled him gently in. This close, her shyness had nowhere to hide. This close, he saw the way her eyes sparkled in the low lighting of the Lounge; the way she watched him as carefully as he watched her. Elliott had never been this close to her, not even in his wildest dreams. The thought of allowing his hands to move cautiously to her waist as hers found the space between his chest and his shoulders had never dared cross his mind. But now, on what was supposed to be the crappiest night of his life, Elliott’s body aligned with hers.

There was but a sliver of space between them while they began to sway, and it was all at once too much and too little. He couldn't tell if he desperately wanted to tear his eyes from hers or if they were the only thing he wanted to look at for the rest of the night. And he pressed his lips together, wanting so badly to say something, to fill what little there was between them with an empty slew of words… but wanting equally as badly to say nothing at all.

But she seemed as nervous as he was. They held each other stiffly, like someone was going to break if they made too bold a move. And she must have been thinking what he was thinking, because her mouth curved upwards with amusement as she laughed softly up at him.

“I don’t dance, you know,” she said, her teeth pulling a little at the corner of her lip. “Never have… never thought I would.”

“Wh…” Elliott cleared his throat, not expecting his voice to be hoarse. But she spoke to him in whispers, so he did the same. “What changed?”

Renee playfully rolled her eyes. “You… looking so miserable.”

He scoffed softly at that, but his grin was wide and easy as he looked down at her. Somehow, it managed to disarm him somewhat. Not that any of this could be considered armed. Not that this was a proximity wherein one could have their guard up. “C’mon… wasn’t that miserable!”

“I’m not just talking about tonight,” she explained, and Elliott could hardly feel the space between them melting away; hardly noticed the muscles in his fingers relaxing against her. He waited for her to explain herself further, but she didn’t. Maybe she didn’t need to.

And Elliott wished he could just shut his brain off and enjoy the moment. This sacred thing with someone who always seemed so unattainable and unknowable. But that was just it, wasn’t it? He’d never been able to define Renee, not in all the time he’d known her. Every time he thought he had cracked the code—that… enigma—she’d just casually go and defy whatever loose expectations he’d created for her in his mind.

Now, with inches between them, Elliott somehow felt like he knew her even less. And he felt like he’d never know someone in the same way ever again.

“I’m okay,” he told her. Part of him was a liar for it. Not all of him, though. “I think… I’m making my peace with it now.”

She smirked a little. “Oh, really?”

The shyness had disappeared from her eyes. One thumb smoothed over the material of his white button up as the song on the jukebox changed, and Elliott found the tips of his fingers flexing against the small of her back. He thought she’d step away.

But she didn’t.

Maybe it wasn’t for Elliott to know. Maybe he’d never be able to define her. Maybe, for as long as he was going to know her, she would never stop surprising him. 

Maybe that thought excited him. Maybe he could let it go—trying to figure her out.

“Yeah,” he said, his eyes slipping shut as they continued to move together, “yeah. Definitely.”