Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

“This is an interesting proposition,” Mercedes mused, looking the vehicle up and down. It wasn’t large, as spaceships went, but it was still a spaceship, and it was bigger than the hotel they’d been staying in.

“Why do you want to buy a ship again?” she asked the two men next to her.

“It’s good work,” the tall one said. “None of us have held a steady job since the war ended, but if we had a ship we could be merchants and transport goods or passengers.”

“The ship would be able to pay for itself inside of a few contracts, I think,” Kurt added quickly. He was much smaller in build than his brother, but usually quicker of tongue. Clearly he had thought through this explanation several times, and knowing him he had probably even practiced it.

“Are you talking about smuggling? I can’t believe you would--”

“Mercedes,” Kurt hissed. “We are talking about helping folk get things transported to where they need them, and gettin’ paid for so doing. I am shocked that you would insinuate that we would be anything but law abiding--”

Finn just nodded.

“Right then.” Mercedes looked back and forth between the two of them. “You two are the weirdest brothers I’ve ever met,” she announced, and then strode off to get herself a good drink. When the Furt brothers got an idea into their heads, it wasn’t worth fighting it. She just had to decide whether she wanted to be a participant in this particular escapade or not.

She decided to join them.

Of course she did. Mercedes had tried to be rational and weigh the pros and cons of becoming a space smuggler, and the truth was that since the war it was getting harder to stay clear of the Alliance on any of the major planets, so taking to the skies was a fairly rational solution. The Alliance was busy on and between the central planets, but nobody could fully patrol the further reaches of the black. And besides, she would never turn her back on Kurt and Finn. They were all the family she had left.

The war had been long, and the three of them had been the only surviving members of their company after the battle of Serenity Valley. They were one misstep away from being outlaws already--on account of having been on the losing side in that war--so what did it really matter if they added smuggling to the list.

By the end of the day Furt Brothers Enterprises was officially a thing, and they were the proud owners of one very used firefly model spaceship. Kurt insisted on naming her Bounty, (“because she will provide for us,” he said.) He wasn’t swayed by Mercedes’ reminder of the famous mutiny on a ship of that name, instead offering the flimsy argument that they were already in the post-mutiny stage and to just stuff it.

So they had a company, and they had a ship.

Now all they needed was a crew.

“We come as a team,” the mechanic said, pointing back and forth between herself and a lanky blond fellow. Her name was Tina. She was short and wiry, with her hair pulled up into two messy, black-and-purple streaked buns on either side of her head. She wiped her hand across her forehead and left a smudge there that matched the one that was already on her cheek.

“We do need a pilot and a mechanic,” Kurt said carefully, with a sideways glance at Mercedes. “But my brother was going to find a pilot at the--”

“Sam is great,” Tina continued, with hardly a break. “We done worked together before. We get on good and he can set a ship down all gentle like a flower petal drifting to the garden bed.”

Mercedes was watching the pilot. He was attractive, and she liked that he wasn’t too talkative--or at least that he wasn’t talking over Tina. Mercedes hated when people talked over each other. Could this guy really be polite, as well as good looking? That was a rare combination in this part of the ‘verse. And very attractive.

“But you only come together?” Kurt repeated. Tina nodded fiercely.

“We’ll talk about it,” Mercedes assured them, grabbing his arm and pulling him away before he could turn them down on the spot. They were definitely going to talk about this.

“How did your meeting with that pilot go?” Mercedes asked Finn over dinner that night. It might be Furt Brothers Enterprises but Mercedes was an integral part of the group and they all knew it.

“He’s a drunk,” Finn pronounced, slamming down his cup so hard that the liquid sloshed out a little. “Maybe he used to be a good pilot, but I wouldn’t trust him to drive a gorram go kart now.”

“That’s too bad…” Mercedes murmured. “We actually have some news that might be helpful on that front though.”

Kurt grunted. “Yeah.”

“What?” Finn looked eager and excited, as usual.

“The mechanic we talked to has a pilot that she’s worked with before, and she says they come as a team,” Kurt said with a sigh.

“That’s great!” Finn beamed.

“I don’t know,” Kurt pushed back. “I don’t want to hire someone just on the word of someone else. I want to see some proof that they are good at what they do. I mean, I asked Tina some really technical questions about the engine and she knew all the answers and was able to show me all the parts that I mentioned. But we don’t know anything about the pilot.”

“I liked him,” Mercedes said as casually as she dared.

“Yeah, on account of him bein’ easy on the eyes,” Kurt sniffed.

“So what if he was?” Mercedes retorted. “Tina seemed quite professional. She likely knows what she’s talkin’ about.”

“Why can’t we just try him out?” Finn suggested. “If you two can stop arguing over the pretty man long enough that is.”

Mercedes gestured toward Finn. “There you go, Kurt.”

Kurt rolled his eyes, but he agreed.

“Just between you and me,” Sam muttered covertly to Mercedes as they boarded the Bounty, “I’m completely nervous about this test drive.”

“Oh don’t be,” she said soothingly. “Captain just needs to see that you know your craft and he’ll be taking you on. He already likes Tina.”

“Does he, oh, that’s good. I wasn’t sure…”

“Captain Kurt is complicated,” Mercedes shrugged. “His brother is much more forthright. They are completely different kinds of men, but they make a good team, and I couldn’t ask for better captains.”

Sam nodded, then paused and gestured for Mercedes to go into the cockpit ahead of him. She felt a warm tingle in her chest as she stepped through the doorway. Finn was already there, and nodded toward the pilot’s seat. Sam sat down, and looked over the console for a moment before reaching into his bag and pulling out a large plastic dinosaur toy.

Finn glanced at Mercedes with a raised eyebrow, but said nothing as Sam carefully situated the dinosaur on the dashboard, and then added another one beside it.

“Alrighty, well, let’s do this.” Sam popped his knuckles and his neck, then stretched his fingers over the controls and gently lifted a lever.

Mercedes watched him intently, surprised at her own fascination but too enthralled to leave. His long fingers moved gracefully across the knobs and switches as the ship lifted smoothly into the air, and made a brief flight to the nearest moon and back. Finn was standing silently in the corner of the small room, and Kurt had slipped in to stand beside him. It was so quiet that Mercedes could hear nothing except the soft clicks of the console switches, the ever-present hum of the ship’s engine, and her own heartbeat thumping in her ears.

“Well, here we are,” Sam announced suddenly, lifting his hands dramatically and spinning the chair around to face them.

“You already set it down?” Kurt asked incredulously. “I didn’t even feel that landing!”

“Me neither,” Finn said, clearly impressed as well.

Mercedes realized she had stopped breathing and sucked in air hard.

“I can’t promise every landing will be like that,” Sam said humbly. “There’s a good level landing strip here, with good visibility and all. But I do try to be gentle with a ship. This one is older but she’s got a rare beauty, and I’d be lying if I said--

“You’re hired,” Finn said, sticking his hand out toward Sam’s to shake on it.

“Yes!” Tina shrieked from the hallway. She must have been loitering close behind them all along, but she was so quiet that Mercedes hadn’t even realized she was there.

“Really! That’s fantastic!” Sam sputtered as he shook Finn’s hand. “I mean, yes. Thank you. Ok. Good.”

“Welcome to the crew of the Bounty,” Kurt said, proffering his hand as well. Sam shook it firmly, a broad grin filling his face.

Kurt cleared his throat, exchanging a glance with Finn, and then added. “We were hopin’ to head out toward Athos this afternoon. How soon can you be ready to leave the station?”

“Two hours, tops!” Tina piped up from the hallway. “Sam will be faster, but I need two hours.”

Finn nodded. “No problem. I’ll go meet with the man about the cargo, and we’ll be out of here before sundown.

They all filed out of the crowded cockpit and back toward the main living area. Mercedes pointed out the crew’s quarters as they passed them, showing Sam and Tina which rooms would be theirs. As they emerged from the ship and paused to let their eyes readjust to the bright sunlight, Mercedes turned to Sam with one last question.

“I just have to ask, what is with those dinosaurs?”

Sam grinned. “Ask me again sometime.”

Chapter Text

Tina unfolded a little collapsable chair on the ground beside the parked ship, and carefully settled into it with a wide paper parasol in her hands. Spending weeks at a time in space meant that she was not used to sun exposure, and prone to burning very easily. But the parasols were cute and she had four of them in different colors; today Tina had chosen a green and pink one that nicely accented the purple streaks in her hair.

They were only in port for a few hours, to get supplies and drop off their latest shipment. Ideally they needed to get a new shipment--or some passengers--to take on to somewhere else. That was the thing about being in shipping: they had to have something to ship. Tina’s job was to maintain the mechanical components of the ship, not to arrange shipments. Still, she knew that she was more approachable than Cap’n Finn, and more friendly than Cap’n Kurt, so she had taken it on herself to try to help with finding customers if she could. The Cap’ns were not very discriminating about who they did deliveries for, and while Tina understood that was was legal and what was right weren’t always the same thing, she also thought it might be nice to not have to worry about Alliance encounters for a while.

She sat, twirling her parasol and humming to herself. The chair wasn’t very comfortable, but at least it had a footrest and she could sun her toes a little. She didn’t particularly love the sun, but she did miss it sometimes. She amused herself with people watching, and trying to guess at what the various passers-by were up to or where they were going. Most of the people who walked or rode past were not very interesting: laborers with bags of tools, merchants followed by small entourages of nervous-looking assistants, and--of course--a few Alliance soldiers peering around at everyone with patronizing glares. A companion passed by now and then; they were Tina’s favorite to watch. Every companion was dressed in elegant fashions and luxurious materials. Tina could only imagine what one of those dresses or coats must feel like to wear. Whether male or female, they moved with grace and poise that Tina envied almost as much as their clothing; and without exception they were beautiful. She knew that companions were especially trained to be a perfect partner for anyone, but every time she saw one she felt a tiny tinge of sadness at the reminder of her own rough edges.

“Excuse me,” a soft voice said next to her. Tina snapped out of her reverie and looked to see who had spoken. A tall, thin, well-dressed man with dark hair stood there. Tina’s first thought was that he must be a companion, except he seemed both confident and shy at once. Tina immediately found him as intriguing as he was attractive.

“What can I help ya with?” she asked brightly.

“I’m looking to book passage, but I can’t tell which take ships cargo and which take passengers,” he explained. “Could you point me in the right direction for a passenger ship?”

“There aren’t really separate ships,” Tina informed him. “Every cap’n just does what they want mostly. My cap’ns take both passengers and cargo…”

“Are you leaving soon?”

“This evening sometime,” Tina smiled. “Are you in a hurry?”

“A little.” The man glanced around quickly then added softly, “mostly we just want to avoid Alliance…”

Tina raised an eyebrow. “We?” she asked.

“Myself and my sister.”

“Ah, well, we generally try to do that. Avoid Alliance, I mean. I can’t promise o’ course, but nobody really likes having to deal with--”

“Perfect.” The man stuck out his hand and Tina took it with as much surprise as pleasure.

“I can be back here in three hours. Will that be alright?”

Tina squinted at the sun as though gauging the time, then giggled and looked down at her wristwatch. “Oh yeah, three hours should be fine…”

“Mike.” He grinned. “My name is Mike.”

“Nice to meet ya Mike!”

He--Mike--nodded quickly and darted away into the crowd.

Tina watched him go.

“They would be beautiful…” she murmured to herself, staring where he had disappeared into the crowds. “So beautiful.”

“What’s got you grinning like the cat that caught the mouse?”

Startled, Tina sat up and squinted at Cap’n Kurt who had crept up to her side while she had been lost in her thoughts.

“Huh?”

“I said, why are you grinning like that? I don’t think I’ve ever seen you look so...perky. Which is sayin’ somethin’ because you are a remarkably perky person. Possibly the perkiest person I know.”

“Oh. Uh...I--”

“And who would be beautiful?” Cap’n Kurt was grinning back at her.

Tina blushed furiously. Now she was definitely caught. If she didn’t tell him now he’d hound her about it until she did; and the longer she held out, the worse he’d tease her when she finally did confess.

“Our babies.”

Cap’n Kurt pursed his lips and raised an eyebrow, and looked like he was trying not to laugh. “ Our babies? Tina, you do realize that--”

Tina’s face was on fire. “Not mine and yours, oh god no! I mean, not that I wouldn’t consider, if you were askin’, but I know you’re not, I mean, I wouldn’t presume, because…” her voice trailed off as she concluded that there was no graceful way out of this.

Cap’n Kurt grinned widely but quickly recomposed himself. “So whose beautiful babies…?”

“Mike’s”

“And who is Mike?”

“A passenger I found for us, and he’s bringing his sister too!” Tina’s embarrassment was almost completely forgotten in her excitement and pride at having found not just one but two paying passengers.

“Ah,” Cap’n Kurt’s eyes twinkled. “That is excellent. So long as you didn’t promise him the shuttle.”

“Why would I promise him the shuttle?”

Cap’n Kurt shrugged. “I don’t know. But as long as you didn’t, then we’re fine.”

This time it was Tina who raised an eyebrow.

“I also found us a passenger,” Kurt preened. “Someone who will be staying with us for quite some time, and who will be renting the shuttle as his private residence.”

Tina kept the eyebrow up as high as humanly possible, and added a glare. No way was she going to let Cap’n Kurt get away with that vague answer, even if he was her cap’n!

Kurt kept straight-faced for nearly a full minute before he broke and blurted it all out in one breath. “He’s a companion. His name is Blaine. And he’s beautiful. And I might want to have his babies too. Shut up.”

Tina stifled a giggle as Cap’n Kurt turned on his heel and marched into the ship without another word.

Ha! Well, maybe it wasn’t so bad to have to confess to him then, because it looked like Tina had plenty of teasing fodder of her own now too.

A companion! On Bounty ?! Tina clapped her hands delightedly before she even realized what she was doing. This passenger made her just as excited as the other, although in a completely different way. Tina had always wanted to meet a companion. It wasn’t just because they were beautiful or elegant, but because they were refined. Things like beauty were a chance of birth, but refinement was something learned, and oh how Tina wanted to learn it. She knew she was a kind person, smart, strong, and very good at what she did; but in quiet, lonely moments she wished to be graceful and delicate. People told her she was cute, but Tina wanted to be a different kind of pretty. Maybe, just maybe, she could befriend this companion; and maybe, just maybe, he would be willing to teach her some things.

“We have go to,” Mercedes said for the fourth time as she and Tina moved back and forth among the crates and boxes they were securing around the cargo bay. “We can’t keep waiting. The Captain offended somebody downtown and we need to clear out before he has time to come after us.”

Tina was perfectly aware that the threat was real (she wondered whether it was Finn or Kurt who had offended someone, but Mercedes refused to tell her and it didn’t really matter). Everything else was ready. All the cargo had been loaded, and the companion Blaine (with a small entourage) had taken no less than seventeen boxes and bundles inside to his newly leased shuttle, then shut and locked the door and turned on some loud music so cheerful that it was almost sickening. Tina supposed he was unpacking now, and hoped that she would be able to see the space after he was done. She had never been into a companion’s private quarters, but she was certain they would be the most lovely thing ever.

Mercedes glanced pointedly toward the cargo door again.

“Mike said he would be back in three hours, and there’s still a few minutes left,” Tina reminded her, though her waning confidence probably showed through her voice. “They’re paying passengers and seem like normal folk, and we could use some more o’ that if you know what I mean.”

Mercedes nodded and pursed her lips as she straightened a crate. Tina knew that Mercedes wasn’t overly fond of their less-than-legal business ventures. She did what she had to, but she always seemed a little more relaxed when all the cargo aboard was above reproach.

Thankfully, just then Mike rounded the corner with a large satchel over one shoulder and pulling a trunk behind him. He was accompanied by a tall, slender, blonde girl (who carried nothing, and was watching the sky rather than the road and thereby stumbled on the step up onto the ship ramp).

“I thought you said you were bringing your sister,” Tina said in confusion as she took in the girl standing next to Mike.

“This is my sister, Brittany,” Mike said.

“You look nothing alike,” Tina observed.

“I look like our mother and Mike looks like our father,” the blonde announced brightly as she stared around the upper corners of the ship’s cargo bay and chewed on one of her fingernails.

“We have different fathers,” Mike said bluntly. “But we were raised together and she’s my sister in all the ways that count.”

“It isn’t important,” Mercedes interrupted. “As long as you pay your fares, no one here is worried about where you come from or what your…

“Close the doors! Now!” Finn’s voice cackled over the com. “I don’t care if the last passengers are here, we gotta go.”

Mercedes had already pressed the switch. “Done, Captain.”

“Good, cuz we’re about to have company.”

Mercedes met Tina’s eye. “Take these two to their quarters. Now.”

Tina nodded. The engines roared into motion as Mercedes tightened the last cargo cords and Tina led a very wide-eyed Mike and weirdly-cheerful Brittany down the corridor to their room.

Once they were settled Tina went to the engine room to make sure everything was ship-shape. There was nothing like engine trouble to ruin a quick getaway, and she liked to look everything over on the regular anyhow. As usual, she found a couple of loose nuts and one place that was slowly leaking fluid. She tightened them all up as she went. None of them were serious problems--yet--but Tina had no intention of letting them get to that point. She’d been taking care of Bounty for two years now, and so far the old girl had always taken care of her right back.

“How we doin’ down there Tina?” Finn’s voice came over the com.

Sam’s voice interrupted. “What he means is, can we do the fast thing yet?”

Tina pulled a lever. “Hyperdrive is ready to go!”

“Oh goodie! I love it when we do the fast thing!” Sam sounded like he was about to giggle.

Me too, thought Tina as she plopped into her engine room hammock, as the ship sped away from danger. I love everything about this ship. I’m so glad it’s my home.

Chapter Text

Mike’s initial impressions of Bounty --and her crew--had been mixed to say the least. Tina had been very kind but no-nonsense in the way that she hurried them to their quarters and told them to stay put. It had been a little unsettling to realize that someone was literally chasing them as they left Pandora, however once he thought it through he realized that his post-Alliance life was going to be different, and he might as well get used to it.

Mike looked around their new living quarters. Their rooms were small, simple, and nearly identical, with grey walls, a single bunk, a few drawers under the bed, and a cupboard above it. But they had separate rooms for the first time since Mike had rescued Brittany from that... place .

The ship shuddered and jolted for a while as it went through the planet’s atmosphere, and then smoothed out as it settled into a flight pattern. A male voice spoke over the intercom, assuring them that the threat was gone. But Mike knew, even if they were safe for a moment, the threat was never truly gone.

“He’s my father,” Brittany said, as if that explained everything.

Mike looked at the man who was sitting across from his sister and parents in their living room. If he was her father then it sort of explained a lot...but it opened up just as many questions.

“He’s a scientist,” Brittany continued glibly, apparently without noticing that her brother had stiffened. “He works in the Alliance government, with the important people. And he says I’m the only hope for humanity.”

“Really?” Mike tried to keep his voice level, without sarcasm.

“You know how I’m really smart in some things but not in the ways that are like everybody else and so nobody can tell and they think I’m weird or stupid?”

Yes, he knew. It broke his heart to hear Brittany say it so bluntly though; he had always hoped that maybe she didn’t realize all the things that others said about her.

“Well it turns out that my smarts are exactly what the Alliance needs. Because I can think different from anyone else, so I can fix different problems from anyone else. And my father has come to take me to a special school!”

“Isn’t it great?” their mother interjected. “You’re leaving for medical school next week, and Brittany would have been so lonely without you, but now she can go to a school of her own! It’s going to be perfect!”

Mike felt incredibly uncomfortable about the whole situation. Something about this man felt wrong. But Brittany was clearly excited, and their mother supported the idea, so he said nothing.

A few hours later Mike shook the man’s hand, gave Brittany a hug, and saw them on their way. The sick feeling in his stomach stayed.

Mike still wasn’t sure how safe he felt on this ship with these people who were...what were they? Smugglers? Thieves? Wanted felons like himself? (That could mean so many things in this ‘verse.) Brittany didn’t seem to have any nervousness though. In fact, for the first time in months, she appeared lighthearted and carefree. Cheerful or not, Brittany had been very insistent that Mike was tired and should take a nap. And to make sure that he did so, she had stolen his shoes, shoved him into the bed, then sat outside the door and nagged at him every time she heard him move. Her caring side was a little unique but all the more endearing because of it.

Mike knew better than to try to argue with her too much, since she always seemed to win (and he was never sure how). He wasn’t really planning to sleep, but he did lay down; as soon as his head hit the pillow a wave of exhaustion had swept over him. Maybe a little nap wouldn’t hurt.

He dreamed--as usual--about Brittany.

For the first few months that Mike was at medical school and Brittany was at...whatever her school was...they were in contact weekly. They sent digital messages and even had a few video calls. Midway through the first year though things started to change. Mike noticed that Brittany didn’t smile as often on the video calls, and she looked tired. When he asked her about it she said it was no big deal, and that she was just a little stressed with her work. She was always vague about what she was working on, but she did let slip that she was helping the Alliance with “very important things.” The longer she was there, the more Brittany changed. The more she seemed not like herself, the more Mike worried about her, and wondered what was really going on at that school of hers.

Mike had never had a problem with the Alliance; they had linked planets across the 'verse under one government, improving access to food, medicine, education, and law enforcement. Yes, they had imposed a unified set of laws across all those planets, and not everyone liked the loss of democratic government systems that had previously been so popular, but in Mike’s perspective the Alliance had brought so many benefits that it was worth giving up a little independence for the sake of the greater good. Mike himself was attending an Alliance medical school and was receiving an extraordinary education which cost him nothing. But over the months as he watched Brittany changing he began to question his faith in the establishment.

Then the video calls stopped.

Brittany told him that it was because there had been security leaks so they were shutting off all forms of calling until they figured it out. She said they would still be able to send digital messages, and not to worry about it. But Mike did worry. Brittany’s messages got further apart; they got shorter and shorter, and weirder and weirder. By the end of the first year, Mike had concluded that something was seriously wrong. Shortly thereafter he decided that he needed to get Brittany out of that place, but the problem was that he didn’t know where it was, or even what it was called.

In retrospect Mike realized that it should have been a huge clue that something was amiss when Brittany’s father whisked her off to a special school without giving the family any specifics about it. Somehow their mother had just accepted it all--Brittany’s father seemed to be accustomed to getting his way and nobody had really tried to stop him. In any case, Mike started trying to figure out where his sister was without asking questions that were too nosey or raising anyone’s suspicions. It finally occurred to him that maybe he could just ask Brittany if she knew where she was, and that’s when he came up with the idea to hide a coded message to her in his next communication. It was a simple code--one they had developed as children and often used with each other--he knew she would recognize it easily.

And she did recognize it. A few days later she replied the the encoded message:

They watch. This is not secure. Will send new.

Her next message used a different code that was more complex, and since she obviously couldn’t send a key Mike had to crack it on his own. It was a little embarrassing that it took him almost a month to crack it, and by that point she had switched to a new code. She switched every second or third message, and so every time Mike had figured out how to read her messages he had to figure out yet another a new code. Mike and Brittany were both certified geniuses, but their minds didn’t work in the same ways and each new code took days or weeks to crack. It was slow going, but over the course of the next six months Mike learned the truth, and it was horrifying.

He learned that she was kept as a prisoner--a pampered prisoner perhaps--but a prisoner all the same. She was not in a school so much as she was in a science lab. She was helping develop mechanisms of all sorts (physical, psychological, and biological), as well as developing countermeasures and antidotes for them. They had taken his kind, loving sister and turned her into a weapon.

They do not believe in mercy. Only control. They won’t stop until they have everyone.

Save me.

If it were all theoretical that might have been better, but the Alliance was very thorough, so they tested everything on convicts. Brittany had watched people die in painful ways or literally go insane, and carried the burden of knowing that she had helped develop the virus that did it.

“Dinner’s ready!” a cheerful voice roused Mike from his fitful rest and he jumped to his feet in defense as his door slid open, Tina’s head poking through.

“Dinner is-- Oh, sorry, I guess you did hear me.”

Forcing himself to relax, Mike rubbed his eyes and nodded.

“Oh, you were sleeping, I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean… That could have been awkward. Oh god. I’ll make sure I knock next time.” She shoved the door shut, and Mike could hear Brittany’s giggle through the door as he slipped his feet into his shoes. He opened it to find the two girls standing together like old friends.

“Your hair looks like a bird,” Brittany said conversationally as she reached for his hand and dragged him down the hall before he could even try to look at it or fix it. He blushed at Tina’s giggles.

The corridor opened into a wider room and Tina’s quick pace halted so abruptly that Mike and Brittany almost crashed into her.

“Everybody, this is Mike and Brittany. Mike and Brittany, this is everybody!” Tina made a sweeping gesture across the room before bounding into a chair. Brittany flashed a wide smile and found a chair as well.

Mike hesitated awkwardly for a moment, but when no one said anything further he gingerly sat down, still wondering what the hell he had gotten himself into.

“We have several new passengers today,” a tall man declared. “We should all introduce ourselves.” He nodded to Brittany and Mike. “I’m Finn, co-captain with my brother here.” He elbowed a smaller man to his side, and the smaller man coughed.

“I’m Kurt, the other half of Furt Brothers Enterprises, co-owner of Bounty , and co-captain.”

And so around the table. Mike already knew Tina, and he’d met Mercedes briefly when they boarded (she seemed like a no-nonsense type, but the man next to her--Sam--seemed to have a sense of humor). There was a refined and debonair companion named Blaine, who was apparently also a new passenger. Mike felt instantly at ease about him. Mike did not feel at all at ease about Puck, who both looked and sounded like a hired mercenary.

“Where is our next port?” Blaine asked midway through the meal.

“Deltan,” Finn said. “We have some business to conduct there.”

“On-planet or between planets?” Sam asked between bites, without even looking up.

Puck belched loudly. “Between planets I reckon, seein’ as how there is only one city on Deltan and they wouldn’ta called us iffn they just needed a gorram trip across town now would they?”

Kurt’s eyes got wide and his jaw dropped. “This is true, but when did you learn Deltan geography?”

“Impressive, ain’t it! I never took a class neither. Also, I should mention that I’ve visited this planet before and I didn’t like it so I will be staying on board and don’t try to talk me into comin’ shoppin’ with ya or nothin’. Also I hate shoppin’.”

“You can just say it, Puck,” Mercedes said with a sigh. “There’s a warrant out for you on this planet too.”

“Dammit Mercedes, I was bein’ all discreet about it.”

“Puck, there are warrants for you on half of the major planets and most of the minor ones--at least if you’ve been to them--”

“And probably a few he hasn’t been to as well,” Kurt added with a wink.

“--and none of us feel any differently about you because of it,” Mercedes finished. “So just eat your beans and don’t worry about it.”

By the time Mike returned to his room that night he wasn’t sure if he felt more or less confident in the people he was sharing a spaceship with.

Mike got to Brittany at the end of the second year. He had never broken a law or even a household rule in his life, but in one day he broke 17 laws and ensured that he’d never work in medicine on any Allied planet; but he got her out. Since then they had been on the run. They couldn’t go home--couldn’t even tell their mother where they were--so they just kept moving.

They would have to keep moving forever--Mike knew that before he broke her out. Brittany was too valuable to the Alliance, both for her mind and for the things that she now knew. They would go to great lengths to catch her and have her work for them again; and if they could not, they would go to great lengths to ensure that she never worked against them.

Brittany seemed to take to the ship easily, helping in the kitchen and spending hours in the cockpit with Sam and his dinosaurs. It wasn’t long before the whole crew all indulged her like the ship’s pet mascot.

Mike was more wary. When he rescued Brittany, he knew that he would be acting as her protector for the rest of his life; it was a responsibility that he gladly accepted, even though he didn’t know how any of the details would work out. But the ship needed a doctor, and while he hadn’t quite completed his training, they all seemed grateful for his expertise. It didn’t take long before the motley crew grew on him.

“So you emancipated this from an Alliance warehouse,” Mike repeated Tina’s words back to her as he looked at the stack of containers in the hold of the ship a few days later.

“Yep!”

“And now you’re going to what?”

“Well all of this was supposed to be on its way to a resort, and we were hired to collect it for a--someone else--which we did. But the person decided to pay us less than agreed, so we delivered less than agreed. And now this--” she gestured to the containers, “needs somewhere else to go. It’s mostly food and medicine so it won’t keep and we don’t need it.” Tina shrugged as though this whole situation were very ordinary.

“And where is it going, exactly?”

“Oh there’s a little mining colony on a nearby planet where everybody is sick and poor. Capt’ns decided we should leave it there. Just drop it off on the edge of town and slip away quick-like so nobody knows it was us.”

Mike nodded and smiled to himself. This crew might not be on the right side of the law, but they seemed to be on the right side of, well, being right. Maybe they were all big damn heroes after all.

Chapter Text

Finn cast a cursory glance across the dials at his fingertips before his gaze returned to the windows at the front of the cockpit. He was a competent enough pilot to take a shift driving now and then, so long as he didn’t have to do any landings, or take-offs, or calculate destinations, or change course. (He could change course just fine, but that didn’t exactly mean that the new course would match the intended destination. Finn insisted that this made things more fun. Kurt just slapped him on the back of the head and yelled for Sam. Kurt couldn’t fly at all, so Finn thought it was more than a little patronizing of him to make fun of his brother’s limited skills. But it was hard to argue with Kurt when he was determined about something, so Finn mostly shrugged, let Sam do the hard flying, and took of most his turns when the ship was on autopilot anyway.)

Autopilot was entirely capable of flying the ship without any help from Finn, but he liked sitting in the pilot’s chair from time to time. It felt important, and since he was co-captain he felt entitled to feel important now and then. Besides, there were precious few windows on the Bounty , and Finn had never gotten over the simple pleasure of looking at the stars. People referred to the outer expanses of the ‘verse as The Black, as though it were only empty nothingness, but Finn didn’t believe that. Some places had more stars than others, but there was always at least one. Besides, you don’t have to see a star for it to be real. That’s what Rachel said.

Or, rather, that’s what she used to say.

Finn shook his head and shifted in the contoured seat. It didn’t seem to matter how many years went by, he still thought of her in the present tense; and she loved stars.

“Do you ever think about everything out there and just feel overwhelmed by it all?” Rachel asked with a sincerity only she could muster.

“All of what? You mean like Reavers?”

“Don’t be silly, those are a myth.” She poked him in the ribs. “I mean like stars. They just go on forever and--”

“In ‘verse geography they said stars are only in the central systems,” Finn supplied, proud of himself for remembering. “Out in The Black it’s just, ya know, black.”

Rachel pouted for a tiny moment before her feistiness resurfaced. “Don’t you think that’s a painfully limiting way to look at things?” she pushed. “I mean, we know that stars look tiny from here but once you fly to them they have planetary systems of their own, and whole other stars are visible from there that we could never see from here. Looks are deceiving. And just because we haven’t found stars everywhere doesn’t mean that they aren’t there. That’s the thing about stars: they’re like dreams. We might not be able to see them, or they may feel beyond reach, but that doesn’t make them any less real.”

Finn shrugged. “Sure.”

Rachel had been the first one to tell him when the war broke out.

“Some folks are fighting back against the Alliance advances,” she breathed excitedly, dropping a leaflet into Finn’s lap. “This is our moment to shine! We should join up!”

“I thought you wanted to a famous singer,” Finn said distractedly, still staring at his gaming console. “You can’t do that in the army.”

“The Alliance doesn’t allow non-approved singers, remember?” She nudged him insistently until he set down his controller and looked at her.

“What?”

“The Alliance is trying to control everything and won’t let us follow our own dreams. They want to tell us what to do, and that’s not ok.”

“Why is it not ok?” Finn was pretty sure she’d talked about this before, but not even love could keep his mind from wandering during some of her longer monologues. The Alliance hadn’t reached this planet yet but he was sort of excited for them to come because he knew they would assign him a job and then he wouldn’t have the stress of trying to figure out which one to go apply for.

“Because every person should have a right to choose their own life path!” The increasing shrillness of her voice made it clear that Rachel was getting frustrated with him. “Some people might be ok with following someone else all the time,” she added pointedly. “But some of us need to be free to shine with our own lights instead of just reflecting someone else’s.”

Finn nodded and hoped that would be enough to satisfy her. He started to turn back toward his game, hoping that maybe she would let him return to playing now, but she grabbed his face and held his gaze.

“What?” he asked again.

“The Alliance is forcing people to become mindless automatons; and that’s why we need to fight against it.”

Finn stared at her, the realization dawning that she hadn’t been kidding about joining the resistance forces...

“You want to enlist?”

“No,” Rachel finally smiled. “I want us to enlist.”

They were issued their brown coats less than a month later, and began basic training. Finn had tried to talk Kurt out of coming with them, but apparently he and Rachel had already had a pact about defending the right to dreams and stardom or something, and he had been insistent. Their parents hadn’t been too excited at the prospect of both of their sons going off to war, but they knew that arguing wouldn’t get them anywhere so they sent them on their way with tearful embraces and made them promise to come home safe.

Mercedes had been Rachel’s bunkmate at basic, and by the end of their training the four had become inseparable. They weren’t initially assigned to serve in the same regiment, but Rachel and Kurt went to talk to the commanding officer and apparently they were very convincing because they came out with smug looks and new assignments that kept them all together.

Finn was a good soldier. He was strong and fast and worked hard. He found some comfort in the rigidity of rules, and he rather liked having someone else be in charge of things and all he had to do was follow orders. The actual battles gave him a fantastic adrenaline rush and he found that he particularly liked when it came to hand-to-hand combat and he could both throw punches and take them. Something about the imminent threat of death made him feel more alive than he ever had before.

Afterward was different though. Finn would never have confessed it to anyone, but on the night after a battle he usually cried himself to sleep. Kurt probably knew; he always slept beside his brother and he was not the oblivious type. But he never spoke of it, and Finn was grateful that Rachel and Mercedes (who were also always near) never seemed to know. In the field there was precious little time for romance, but in those stolen moments Finn held Rachel close and managed to forget the war for a few seconds at a time.

The four of them had fought together for three years, across planets and solar systems, trying to stop the Alliance from taking over the whole ‘verse. Finn had concluded that it was a hopeless cause fairly early on, but he knew the futility of trying to talk Rachel or Kurt out of anything, and he wasn’t about to leave them. Besides, he had come to believe in the cause, even if he didn’t believe that they had a chance of winning. So he stayed and fought.

In the end he always asked himself why he hadn’t tried to get them all to desert; at least at the end. During the last few months before the battle of Serenity Valley soldiers had dropped their brown coats and left in droves. By that point no one was even trying to catch deserters let alone punish them. Everyone knew the end was inevitable and that it wouldn’t be pretty, and most of them had the sense to get out while they could. But a few overly-honorable folk (like Mercedes) and a few overly-stubborn folk (like Rachel and Kurt) stayed, along with the occasional guy like Finn. Finn stayed because he wouldn’t leave Rachel or Kurt, and maybe a little bit because he didn’t know where he’d go if he left.

“It doesn’t matter that we’re outnumbered,” Rachel insisted before every battle. She had been promoted and made everyone call her “Sir,” which made Finn laugh because he still saw the tiny spitfire he’d known at school and it was funny to him to see her leading a battalion. He’d always known she had it in her to lead, he’d just never seen her really do it until now. “It doesn’t matter that we’re outgunned,” she would say. “What matters is that we are fighting for freedom and integrity, while the Alliance only fights for power. They are selfish, but we are a team.”

All the teamwork in the ‘verse couldn’t have saved the final little band of Browncoats that faced off with the Alliance in that beautiful valley though.  The first day decimated nearly half of their remaining force, and overnight their numbers shrank more as the last round of deserters fled. Rachel had taken a shot early in the day and been taken back to receive medical attention behind the lines. It didn’t seem too a serious wound and might have been easily mended, but the Alliance ships had come in low and scattered explosive shrapnel, and the medical facility had been hit hard. Finn saw it all in slow motion: the ship rising from behind the hill, the metal shards glinting in the sun as they sped toward their targets, and the smoke and screams that rose from the building when they hit. Finn had never run from the battle line before, but he ran that day.

Rachel’s breathing was ragged when he found her huddled beside the overturned gurney she had undoubtedly been laying on. Years in the battlefield had taught Finn what death looked like, even before it arrived, and he knew instinctively that Rachel had a few minutes at best. Doing his best to not cry, he pulled her into his arms.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I didn’t mean to quit now...not when...”

“It’s ok,” he murmured. “It’s ok because when you can’t run, you crawl; and when you can’t crawl--” his voice cracked. “When you can’t even do that--you find someone to carry you. And I’m here, Rachel. I’m here to carry you.”

He never knew how much of his assurance she heard, because she breathed her last before he finished.

Finn Hudson hadn’t run before that day, but after that day he didn’t stop running. He hoped that maybe--just maybe--if he went somewhere with nothing and no one that connected to Rachel then he might be able to escape the memories and the pain. But it never worked. It took Kurt and Mercedes several months to catch him the first time, but when he ran again he was more careful and it took them over a year that time. Eventually, though, they found him again.

“I thought I told you not to look for me any more,” Finn said gruffly, attempting to hide the emotions that washed over him at their appearance.

“I know you did, but you’re my brother so I came anyway,” Kurt said amiably, pulling up a stool next to him at the bar.

Finn looked pointedly at Mercedes, who shrugged. “I’m just along for the meaningful conversation and quality rations.”

Finn’s laugh burst out with a rusty quality to it that caught him by surprise. It had been a long time since he’d laughed at anything. But in that moment--and many that followed--he realized that he was never going to escape his past; and that maybe--just maybe--it might be easier to go forward if he weren’t alone.

There had been plenty of good reasons to buy a spaceship. Kurt had pointed out that transporting things was a good business for someone who couldn’t stay in one place for too long, and Finn knew he was right. He had known that they could make good money on transactions of questionable legality, and even downright smuggling. They’d had a hard time talking Mercedes into that last bit, but Finn hadn’t even hesitated. In the years since the war ended he had become more and more convinced that “good” and “bad” were all in the eye of the beholder; and what his eye was beholding was that people on the so-called “wrong” side of the law often seemed to be a lot more decent than the ones in the Alliance.

Besides, as much as Finn didn’t want to admit it, he was a fugitive. He’d never be able to get a respectable job on an Alliance planet now--and they were almost all Alliance planets--so he might as well take to the skies. They may have taken his love, his home, and most of his family, but they could not take every star in the sky.

And there was the rub. Because no matter how far Finn ran, Rachel was always right there, looking back at him from the stars.

Their ship soared through space, delivering and collecting cargo. Their initial crew of three had grown so that Finn was never alone. Some of the company even felt like family, but the ache for Rachel didn’t lessen.

Kurt missed her too--Finn knew he did--but it wasn’t the same. He had been her friend, not her sweetheart. Kurt probably didn’t fully understand what it was to have someone like that...then again if the giggles coming from Kurt’s room when Blaine visited were anything to go by, well, maybe he did. Finn had seen the two of them sneaking to each other’s rooms more than once. Kurt probably thought he was being discreet, but Finn knew him too well. He genuinely wished his brother all the best, but he hoped that falling for a companion didn’t hurt him in the end. True love hadn’t protected Finn from heartache and he knew it wouldn’t protect Kurt.

“I thought I might find you here,” Mercedes’ soft voice behind him startled Finn and he jolted upright.

“Shhh, it’s ok,” she murmured, moving closer and resting a hand on his shoulder. “It’s ok to still miss her you know.”

“It’s been five years; don’t you think--”

“No,” Mercedes interrupted softly. “She was your person. You loved her, and she loved you. It’s not the kind of thing that just goes away.” She brushed her thumb back and forth affectionately on his shoulder, and squeezed it gently.

“I keep thinkin’,” Finn began, but trailed off as the thoughts in his head refused to organize themselves into speakable words. He tried to take a deep breath but it turned into a shudder.

Mercedes remained there, unspeaking, for several minutes.

“I mean, shouldn’t I be feelin’ better than this at least? It can’t be normal to still start cryin’ every time I look at the stars.”

Mercedes shrugged. “Normal is just an average of everyone. Some folk never cry and some need to cry for years. It doesn’t mean there’s something wrong with you.”

Finn sighed and pressed his wide palms into his face, as if doing so might push those gorram tears back where they come from.

“And every time you look out there and remember her, a little part of her is kept alive you know. She always wanted to be a star, and even if no one else knows, you know that somethin’ of her is still alive out there. A memory or an idea or a tiny bit of soul. You don’t have to be able to see a star for it to be real.”

Finn sniffed loudly and cleared his throat. They’d had this conversation before, and he was sure they would have it again, but it always made him feel a little better anyway.

“Good night, Captain.” She kissed the top of his head and slipped back out of the cockpit: undoubtedly to return to her own bunk and Sam.

Finn looked across the control panels one more time, and then blew a single kiss toward the windows, and went to bed.

Chapter Text

Blaine looked intently at the small screen before him. “I will have to ask the captains, of course, but I think we can help.”

“I only ask you because I have no one else to ask.” The image on the monitor was dim but the woman’s voice was clear, and it was a voice he knew well (even if he hadn’t heard it in years).

“I understand.” He knew she was not the kind of person who liked accepting help, let alone asking for it. “I will do my best.”

“Thank you.”

Blaine pressed the button to disconnect the call. Without shifting in his seat he spoke a little louder. “I suppose you heard most of that?”

Kurt leaned out from behind a curtain by the doorway. “Only because I was eavesdropping.”

“Mm-hmmm. So what do you think?”

“Can she pay?”

“I don’t know, but if not then I have some--”

“No need,” Kurt interrupted, stepping close and placing his finger against Blaine’s lips. “Sometimes a good deed is worth doin’ simply because it’s a good deed. I’ll have to check with Finn of course, but I say we go.”

Blaine embraced him. He had expected Kurt to respond with compassion, but he couldn’t help being a little blown away by the man every time he did. It was so different from his initial impressions of the captain, and it was one of the reasons he was in love with him.

They found Finn sitting at the table in the mess. He had gun parts spread out all across the table and was polishing them. He looked up when they entered.

“What is it.”

Blaine wasted no time. “One of my oldest friends from the Academy is in trouble; she’s like a sister to me and I feel like I need to go to her. I know she would do the same for me.”

“Who would do the same for you?” Puck asked as he wandered in.

“My dear friend, Santana,” Blaine said. “She lives on Theophrastus, she’s the head of a House there, and they need help.”

“Lemme get this straight: yer friend, who’s a companion like you, is on a lovely garden planet, with a houseful of other companions, and they want our help?”

“They’re not all registered companions,” Blaine corrected him. “But essentially, yes.”

Puck winked at Finn and puffed up his chest. “Well then, sounds to me like it’s time for some thrillin’ heroics!”

Bounty and her crew arrived on Theophrastus a few days later, and set down in a field behind the brothel.

“Don’t call it that,” Tina said, elbowing Puck.

“Why not? Is there a better word?”

“We just call it a ‘House’” Blaine informed him.

“Call it whatever you want, it means willing women!”

“As though you’ve ever had trouble in that department,” Finn bumped him with his shoulder.

Kurt appeared and they all quieted.

“Shall we then?” Kurt asked.

Blaine smiled, nodded, and led the way out.

None of the crew had been to Theophrastus before, but the rumors were true that it was verdant and lush. Blaine hardly paused as he strode toward the main entrance of the House, but all the others were distracted by the trees and other greenery. Blaine realized that most of them probably had not been on a planet like this before. He thought back to his first time on a planet like this,  smiled fondly, and slowed his pace a little to give them time to enjoy the scenery.

Santana must have seen them coming, because she came out to meet them, followed by a line of others. Blaine noted that there were both women and men in the House. All orientations were recognized on central planets, of course, and it was generally known that most registered companions served clients without regard to gender, but some planets were not so enlightened, and Blaine was always a little wary on a new planet until he was able to assess the local politics.

“Blaine!” She was still as striking as she had been at the Academy, with long, black hair that she wore pulled back on one side.

“Santana!”

They greeted each other with a warm hug. “Thank you for coming. I truly did not know what we were going to do. We all thank you.”

Blaine nodded in greeting, still holding Santana’s hands.

“This is Kitty, Quinn, Jesse, Jake, Lauren, Sugar, and Unique.”

“Pleased to meet you all, I’m sure.” Kurt’s smile looked a little forced to Blaine, but he doubted that anyone else would notice it. Other people didn’t pay attention to Kurt the way he did.

The taller of the two blonde girls had already approached Finn, and was murmuring in his ear. Smooth. Finn looked a little overwhelmed or confused, but he took the girl’s hand and followed her into the building.

Puck was grinning and flirting with everyone in the line, and when they all headed into the building Blaine saw Puck slip away up a hallway with two of them. Yep, Blaine had seen that one coming. Reading people was something he’d been trained in at the Academy--as were all companions--but Blaine had always been exceptionally good at it.

Blaine, Kurt, and Mercedes met with Santana in her office. Finn hadn’t returned and Kurt didn’t feel like waiting for him and said he could fill him in later. Santana gestured for them to sit in several chairs, and then settled herself behind a large wooden desk to explain why she’d asked for their help.

“His name is Sandy Ryerson. I guess I should have known better, and people had warned me about him, but the recession here has been hard and we needed money so I mortgaged the property to him.”

“Did you own it outright before?” Kurt asked (he always kept track of the business side of things. Blaine thought it was terribly attractive).

Santana nodded. “Yes. And we’ve been making regular payments to Ryerson for several years and actually we’ve already repaid the full amount that we borrowed. But he charged a high interest rate and so we are still making payments. I knew he was a shady character when we started this but it’s been ok, you know? I expected to pay interest. It’s fine. Until last week he came in and demanded payment in full by the end of the month or he’d burn the place to the ground.”

“I see.” Kurt pursed his lips.

“And you don’t have the money,” Mercedes clarified. “And you can’t get it.”

Santana shook her head. “He suggested that maybe the girls here could pay in services for himself and his friends, but we don’t do business that way. Maybe not everyone here is a registered companion, but this is a classy establishment, you know? Everyone is clean and healthy, and we take consent very seriously. I would never allow someone like Ryerson and his minions to just have their way with my girls and boys.”

“Of course,” Blaine understood perfectly.

“Also, even if some of them were willing, I wouldn’t allow Ryerson to patronize this establishment anyway, because--” She pulled back her hair on the side where it fell over her face, revealing an ugly purple welt. Mercedes gasped and Santana let the hair fall forward again.

Blaine reached out to grasp Santana’s hand and gently squeezed it. If that was the kind of person Ryerson was, it was no wonder she wouldn’t let him seek payment in services. Santana had always been fierce about defending her own.

“When is the end of the month here?” Kurt asked. (Of course he did. He always paid attention to details like the fact that calendars were different from one planet to another.)

“Four days.”

Kurt nodded. “Well, it’s late. Let’s all get food and rest, and I’ll find Finn and fill him in. In the morning we can make our plans. Mercedes nodded and they started to stand up, but Blaine laid a hand on Kurt’s arm and he sat back down. Blaine nodded to Santana who still sat behind her desk.

“I cannot offer payment in money,” Santana said. Blaine knew this was a sore point for her, as she hated being indebted to anyone. “All we can offer is food, shelter, our gratitude, and of course anyone who wishes to employ our services is welcome to do so with anyone who consents.”

Kurt stood again and held out his hand to shake hers. “I think that will be quite satisfactory. We are here to help because you are a friend of Blaine’s, and because we believe in seeing justice done; not because we’re looking for pay.”

The next morning they gathered for a council of war. More or less.

Kurt had begun the meeting by stating “we will try to reason with him first.” But within a few minutes everyone was just talking about weapons and ammunition, how good the well was in case Ryerson made good on his arsony threats, and how best to fortify the building. Through most of this Finn fiddled with his gun but said little. Finally he spoke.

“It’s not too late to run, you know.”

“What?” Santana glared at him. “I thought you said you would help.”

“We will help. We can take you all off this planet, to somewhere you can get a fresh start.”

Santana pursed her lips for only a moment before answering. “I have put blood, sweat, and tears into this House. It’s worth more to me than money. I would rather go down fighting than turn tail and run.”

Blaine looked around the room and saw the other House residents all nodding.

Finn shrugged a little, then he clacked his gun shut and grinned. “Well I thought I’d offer, but it sounds like y’all are my kind o’ stupid. So let’s do this thing.”

They spent the rest of the day working on fortifying the House and developing a plan. Kurt spent several hours organizing talking points, but eventually he joined the rest in boarding up windows and sorting ammunition.

“He’s kinda skinny,” Santana murmured to Blaine as she pounded nails into the board he was holding.

Blaine blushed. He forgot sometimes that other companions had the same training he did, and that he couldn’t hide things from them.

“It’s ok, you’re kinda skinny too.”

Blaine blushed harder.

Puck interrupted by pushing between them. He was walking backward down the hall, leading Kitty by the hand, and didn’t seem at all perturbed by the things he kept bumping into.

Santana chortled. “That’s the second one today. I am beginning to think he’ll try the company of everyone here before he leaves.

Blaine chuckled. “He just might.”

Blaine had difficulty sleeping that night, not because there was anything wrong with the accommodations (indeed, they were far superior to what he’d expected for such an outer planet), but because the night before a fight always made him anxious. After a while of tossing and turning he got up to take a walk and perhaps read for a while.

Apparently he was not the only one who felt restless, because he found Santana on a couch in the parlor with a cup of tea.

“Would you like some?” she asked, raising the cup. You could take the companion out of the academy, but you couldn’t take the academy out of the companion.

“Thank you, Santana.”

She smoothly got up, fetched a second cup, and served him as he settled into the couch beside her.

“Thank you.”

“So how long has it been since we saw each other?” He asked conversationally.

“I left the academy nine years ago. I don’t think we have since then.”

Blaine nodded. “The story of you smashing that dulcimer became legend. I don’t know if you knew that.”

Santana laughed, rich and throaty. “Well, I did always say I wanted to be famous.”

“For acts of violence against musical instruments…”

They talked for a while about their lives, their experiences, and the people they were sharing them with.

“They’re good people, your crew,” Santana observed. “Except maybe the one… Puckerman? He’s one to keep an eye on.” She nodded as though agreeing with herself. “But the rest, yes. Your captain seems to be a good fit for you.”

Blaine beamed. “I think he is.”

“And the other captain--Finn--what’s his story? Why isn’t he with that woman he loves?”

Blaine nearly spat out his tea in surprise.

“Oh it’s obvious he’s lonely for someone. It only took a little nurturing attention to find that he hasn’t been with anyone in a long time. It’s not hard to put the pieces together.” She shrugged. “But I’m polite and I don’t ask too many questions of a man I’m bedding. I just take care of him.”

“First, she died in the war. And second, you took Finn to bed? Well that’s surprising.”

Santana looked at him strangely. “What’s surprising about a healthy man wanting to sleep with a beautiful woman?”

“What’s surprising is that--from what Kurt says--he hasn’t let anyone that close since his sweetheart died.”

“That sounds terrible.”

“And lonely.”

Santana nodded.

“Well, I’m glad he slept with you. I have no doubt that you took good care of him. I’m sure he needed it.”

They both sipped their tea in silence for a while before Tina wandered in, looking groggy.

Blaine smiled at her. “Hey you.”

She started to mumble a “hey you” in return but interrupted herself with a yawn and it came out more as “hey yaaaaow.” She stood in the middle of the room and blinked a few times.

“Do you want a drink?” This wasn’t the first time Blaine had found her wandering at night.

“Yeah.”

He got her a glass of water from the sidebar. She gulped it quickly, her eyes still closed, and smiled.

“Which room are you staying in?” Blaine asked her, knowing that she’d probably need him to lead her back.

“With Brittany an’ Mike. By the window. Issa blue door…”

He nodded a farewell to Santana, took Tina by the elbow, and gently led her back to her room. Then he returned to his own.

Kurt was still asleep, just as he had left him. Blaine never had understood how someone could sleep so soundly on the night before battle, but maybe that was something he had learned in the war. If every night is the night before battle, there aren’t a lot of alternatives.

He stood for some minutes, just staring at the beautiful man sleeping there. Kurt stirred a little, and Blaine quickly slipped off his shirt and pants, and gently slipped into the bed behind him, gently laying an arm across him. Kurt wriggled backward until he had nestled firmly into Blaine’s chest.

Blaine kissed his shoulder.

“Missoo.”

“I missed you too, love.”

As they had expected, Ryerson showed up on the third day. It wasn’t the last day of the month yet, “but he’s the impatient sort, obviously.”

They had all been edgy all morning, knowing that he was likely to come but not knowing when. They were pacing, checking and rechecking weapons, making sure the coms worked, and--

“Oh girlie, that is just plain dirty!”

“Puck,” Finn snapped. “Were you aware that your com is on? Because I don’t feel particularly girlish or dirty at the moment.”

The com went fuzzy for a moment, there was some cursing and a few thumps, and then it went silent.

Kurt rolled his eyes. “If he weren’t such a good shot I swear we’d have gotten rid of him ages ago.”

“But he’s a good shot,” Finn noted.

“Yep.”

In spite of his apparent distractions, it was still Puck who saw Ryerson’s approach first.

“Hey folks, it looks like we got some imminent violence.”

Finn and Kurt looked at one another, nodded once, then stepped outside the front door to meet him.

Ryerson had a posse of minions behind him, but they stayed back a bit. Blaine suspected that they didn’t like Ryerson anymore than anyone else did, and were mostly there for the paycheck.

“I’m here for my money,” Ryerson bellowed.

“How’s about you just turn around and saunter on home,” Kurt suggested amiably. “You’ve been full paid and then some for what you loaned on this place. There’s no need to gouge them.”

“That woman signed a contract and I will have what is lawfully mine!” Ryerson’s voice had a nasal quality to it that made everything he said sound like whining or shrieking.

“What’s lawful and what’s right ain’t always remotely the same thing,” Kurt said flatly. Finn flipped back his jacket and rested his palm on the handle of his pistol.

Ryerson squinted at them, glancing from one to the other. “Really? You think you can stop me? I own this town. You should just give it up now and go away back to wherever you came from before anyone gets hurt.”

Kurt raised an eyebrow at him. The “I’m judging you” eyebrow.

Ryerson laughed, long and loud. “You see how many men I have here? You don’t stand a chance.” He hefted his rifle, and pointed it at Kurt, then Finn, then Kurt again.

Kurt shrugged. “Maybe not, but that doesn’t mean--”

The gun went off before Kurt could finish his sentence. Blaine didn’t see the shot, but a thin curl of smoke rose at Ryerson’s shoulder, revealing him as the aggressor.

“If ya wanna fight, let’s fight and not waste any time talkin’ like pansies!” Ryerson yelled as Finn and Kurt retreated into the building.

Plan B it was.

The crew and House residents were spread around the building, set up in teams behind boarded-up windows. Santana and Finn stood side by side, alternating shots into the assembled mob below. Mercedes and Kurt were in another room, firing off rounds so fast that it was damn sexy. (Blaine wasn’t sure when firing guns had become a turn-on for him, but apparently it had.)

“Don’t shoot anyone who is runnin’ off,” Finn yelled down the hall. “We got no cause to kill anyone who is leavin’, only those who are shootin’ back.”

Puck was in a room with two of the House girls behind him, handing him one gun after the other. (“Just hand me the biggest one and then the next one and so on,” he’d told them, and they seemed to be doing just that.)

Mike and Tina had set up somewhere on the edge of the property with a water pump and hose, and were using it to chase off would-be-attackers as well as putting out the periodic spurts of flame that appeared when lasers met wood.

Blaine and Sam were together, and for some reason Brittany had taken up a stance behind them. She was watching all the goings on very intently, and periodically she touched one of their guns as they were shooting them. Both Blaine and Sam were fair shooters, but neither had the experience or skill of those who had actually seen battle. But Blaine soon noticed that whenever Brittany nudged his weapon his shots were truer than the ones he aimed himself. He looked back at her and their eyes met in some sort of understanding. He nodded at her, and after that she kept one hand on the back of each of their guns. (Sam glanced at her, then at Blaine, then back at her before shrugging and focusing on the fight again.)

In the heat of it the battle felt like it would never end, but later when Blaine looked at the clock he realized that the whole thing had been over in less than half an hour. Most of Ryerson’s men ran away quickly, and the few that remained with him didn’t stand a chance. Soon Kurt, Finn, Puck, Mercedes, and one of the House girls (a burly one named Lauren) had the assailants all on their knees in a little circle on the ground.

“We did try to arrange this peaceful-like,” Kurt reminded the group as he looked down at them.

“Hand over the deed to this property,” Finn demanded.

“I don’t have it--” Ryerson began, but Lauren kicked him. “I mean that I don’t have it here,” Ryerson corrected.

“Then kindly take us to where it is,” Puck said through gritted teeth. “He ain’t very bright,” he added in an aside to Lauren as the two of them hauled the little man to his feet.”

“Wait,” Santana called out. “There’s one thing I’d like to say to him first.” Puck and Lauren--on on either side of Ryerson--turned him around to face her.

“Say anything you like, so long as it don’t take too long,” Puck instructed.

Santana smiled sweetly, stepped close to Ryerson, and hissed in his ear “don’t ever try to cross me again, understand?” Then she slapped him hard across the face, and stepped back with a satisfied look on her face.

“Anybody else need to slap, kick, or otherwise abuse this ching-wah tsao duh liou mahng ?” Puck called out helpfully. There were a few snickers but no one stepped forward. “Aright then, we gonna get them papers.”

Blaine and Santana followed the prisoner and his two self-assigned guards to Ryerson’s office in town. Once they were inside Ryerson pulled out of their grasps.

“You may have outgunned my men, but you have no real authority here. I have power in this town, you can’t push me around like this.”

“Watch us,” Santana spat.

“Why, just because you have some muscle here? That’s not power, that’s just bullying. I want to speak to someone in charge.” Ryerson’s tone became extremely smug. “Don’t you have a chain of command in your little motley crew?”

Puck spat. “You know what the chain of command is? It’s the chain I go get and beat you with until you understand who’s in ruttin’ command here. Now give the lady the deeds. NOW!”

The last word was accompanied by a sharp kick to Ryerson’s hindparts, and the latter finally got moving. He reached inside his shirt and pulled out a key that was attached to a cord around his neck. He unlocked and opened the cabinet, pulled out a stack of papers, and handed them to Santana with a sigh.

“There, that’s the lot of them. Now leave me alone, would you?”

Santana looked through the pages for a moment until she located the one she wanted, then carefully folded it up and slipped it into her bodice. The rest she handed to Blaine to carry back so she could distribute them later.

“Nice doing business with you,” she called as she walked out the door.

The next morning they gathered behind the House to say their farewells. Tina hugged almost everyone, and Puck kissed most of them. Kurt slid his arm around Blaine’s waist and Blaine did the same in return.

“Alright then, let’s get outta here,” Finn said. “You’ve all been lovely but we need to go find some paying work.”

They were turning to walk toward the ship when one of the girls came running out of the house yelling “wait!” and waving some brightly-colored thing. She ran to Puck and pressed it into his hands before disappearing back into the House. Puck turned it over in his hands, grinned and put it on his head. It was a hat. A lumpy, violently bright, orange and yellow hat with a poof ball of yarn on the top. Puck grinned the whole way back to the ship.

Chapter Text

Puck had never cared very much about whether their contracts were legal or not; he just cared that they didn’t get caught. Everybody had business to conduct, and so far as Puck was concerned there wasn’t one business that had more right to exist than another. Sure, some of them were outlawed by the Alliance, but he still remembered the years before the Alliance Unification when he was growing up on a rural little planet with few people and fewer rules. He didn’t see the point in making lots of laws about things, since in his experience people tended to do what they wanted anyway.

But Kurt, Finn, and especially Mercedes all cared very much whether their contracts were legal. It did make things a little easier because they didn’t have to worry about random Alliance inspections or having to be able to fit cargo into the hidden compartments. Still, when Finn proudly announced to the crew what their next cargo would be Puck was not impressed.

“Chickens?”

“They’re not chickens,” Kurt corrected him. “I said they were like chickens. Partly. I mean they are descended from chickens. And other things.”

“Cottonheads are similar to chickens in appearance, but they’re four times larger and much less tame,” Mercedes said, like she was some gorram dictionary. “But the shells of their eggs are the only known source of serenium in the ‘verse. So they’re valuable. And a whole flock of them is running wild on Callaphon and if we can catch them we can sell them for more than we made in the entire last year.”

“So we catch the monster chickens, put them in the ship, and take them to Beaumonde then we are rich.”

“Fanty and Mingo aren’t my favorite people to do business with, but they pay in cash, and they don’t cheat,” Finn agreed.

Which was how Puck had gotten himself here: running through a forest on Callaphon trying to catch overgrown chickens with bad hair. (“It’s just a tuft of feathers on their head,” Kurt had explained, as though it were no big deal. “It’s how they got the name cottonheads, obviously.”) Obvious or not, the gentility of the name was entirely inappropriate for how obnoxious these birds were.

For one thing, they did not take kindly to being caught. Puck, Finn, and Sam had been chasing them for half the day and had nothing to show for it. Finally Sam convinced everyone that they should go back to the ship to eat, regroup, and make a plan.

When they returned they explained the situation to their shipmates, and Mike made a suggestion. (He was a nice guy--a bit too high and mighty for Puck’s taste--but a nice guy.)

“Cottonheads are animals, and all animals have two imperatives: to sustain their own lives and to reproduce. Perhaps we can appeal to one of those imperatives and lure them to us rather than having to chase them?”

“We had food to draw them in, Mike,” Finn said. “They didn’t seem to care.”

“Then we must appeal to their drive to mate.”

“Hey now, I ain’t gonna be the one gettin’ in a chicken costume and doin’ a matin’ dance for no cottonhead, if that’s what you’re suggesting,” Puck blurted. “I have standards.”

Blaine smiled mildly. Kurt visibly bit his lip. Mercedes laughed into her hand. Tina snorted. Brittany examined the tines of her fork. Finn looked confused.

“What are you suggesting, Mike?” Finn asked.

“Well, as amusing as I’m sure the bird costume could be, Puck, that was not what I had in mind. I was going to suggest pheromones.”

“Pheromones?” Blaine sat up straighter in his seat. “That’s an intriguing idea. How would you do that?”

“You could collect me some feathers, right?” Mike asked the group.

“Oh sure, easy,” Sam said. “They were all over the ground.”

“If you bring me some feathers, I can distill DNA from them, and use that to synthesize appropriate pheromones into a liquid form. Then all you’d need to do is sprinkle some of the liquid on something and use it to attract the cottonheads. They should come easily for that.”

“How long will it take you to do all that? Mercedes asked.

Mike shrugged. “Twelve hours? Maybe fourteen? I can have it ready to go tomorrow morning for sure.”

“Well that sounds like a plan,” Kurt decided.

“Strawberries,” Brittany said.

That afternoon they collected cottonhead feathers and brought them to Mike, and he started working away in his little lab in the infirmary. Puck watched for a little while but then he got bored and decided to sharpen his knives and polish his guns instead. (He had a lot of them, and they required a lot of attention and upkeep. Like children.)

The next morning Mike presented them with a little glass bottle containing an amber liquid.

“I’m sorry there’s not more of it, but this should be enough if you are careful with it.” He held out the bottle and Finn took it.

“What are we going to put it on?” Sam asked. “To lure them with? I mean we’ll have to throw it out when we’re done, right?”

“Yes--” Mike responded.

“How about this?” Finn grabbed the orange hat off Puck’s head. “This is disposable, right?”

“Hey!” Puck reached for the hat, and Finn held it high in the air, taunting him as he jumped for it. As Puck jumped closer, Finn twisted and side-stepped to keep it away from him, resulting in him stumbling over his own feet and falling. Puck snatched the hat from his sprawled captain and pulled it firmly back on his head. Only then did he notice that Finn hadn’t gotten up.

Mike was already kneeling beside Finn before anyone had spoken, his hands deftly moving across the captain’s body. Finn hissed when he touched his ankle.

“I think it’s just a sprain,” Mike announced. “But he can’t walk on it today, that’s for sure.”

Sam and Puck helped Mike get Finn to the infirmary, where Finn handed over the bottle to Sam.

“Be careful with this.”

This time it was Kurt who joined Puck and Sam in attempting to capture the cottonheads. They rode out on the ship’s mule (a small hovercraft for on-planet travel) and soon found a flock of several dozen cottonheads grazing peacefully on shrubs and bugs. Their plan was that Kurt and Sam would circle around behind the flock and make noise to try to shoo them toward Puck. Puck meanwhile would sprinkle the pheromone liquid on a rag and wave it around until the cottonheads took notice, and then the three of them would all hurry aboard the mule and lead the cottonheads back to the ship. If something went wrong, plan B was to run.

It seemed like a simple enough plan, and as Kurt and Sam made their way to their designated places Puck squatted down to prepare the rag. He laid it on the ground, got out the bottle, and started unscrewing the lid.

Except that it wouldn’t unscrew. The longer Puck worked at it the more frustrated he became. Puck was not a weak man, but this lid was stuck and did not want to budge. He could see his crewmates gesturing impatiently, so he twisted all the harder. Some of the cottonheads were wandering off now and Puck knew they would have to start all over if he didn’t get this done now, so he did the first thing that came to mind and broke the bottle on a rock.

The liquid burst out of the pressurized bottle, spraying on the rag and all over Puck as well. A whole swarm of cottonheads (they later counted 42) charged him, and Puck skipped directly to the ‘run like hell’ part of the plan.

Puck was fast, but wild cottonheads were faster, as they all soon discovered.

“Help!” He screamed as the first bird catapulted into his back, closely followed by a second. Their combined weight made him stumble, and then fall, as the full swarm of birds closed in on him. He could hear Kurt and Sam getting closer, but he already felt the weight of bird after bird climbing on him, hopping and strutting and--

“Don’t let them eat me!” Puck yelled. “You have to shoot me before they do! Fay-fay duh pee-yen! I can’t die this way!”

He felt strong arms pulling him to his feet, and saw Sam’s encouraging face. “C’mon.”

Behind Sam was Kurt. His gun was out and he was covering the birds, but showed no inclination to shoot. “They’re mostly herbivores, I believe,” Kurt said calmly. “And they’re only worth anything alive, so I’m not inclined to be shooting at any of them. But if you feel you’ve been mortally injured, sure, I can shoot you. Or you could join us on the mule and we can lead them to the ship.

Only then did Puck notice that Kurt was astride the hovercraft, and that Sam was dragging him onto it.

“Right, good plan.”

Sam climbed into the pilot’s spot and revved the motor; they sped toward the ship, with the cottonheads in close pursuit. Puck watched the birds, running, jumping, and flying close to the ground in short spurts. They shamelessly stepped on one another in their eagerness. Sam carefully adjusted his speed several times so that the cottonheads were able to stay close, but not quite able to catch them.

When he was sure he was safe from being attacked again, Puck decided he needed to defend his honor, so that he wouldn’t appear any less manly for having been taken down by a bunch of birds. “I swear they were biting, you know. They are vicious critters.”

“It mostly looked like they were humping you, actually,” Kurt observed dryly. “I expect you’re just not accustomed to being on the receiving end of such vigorous attentions.”

“Don’t make assumptions about what I am or am not accustomed to being on the end of!” Puck spat. Kurt was always making comments that made Puck feel dumb, or less manly, and he hated it. He was the biggest man he knew and Kurt was a tiny little thing, even if he was a captain.

Sam said, “look, we’re almost there.” He pulled out his transmitter. “Mercedes, have someone ready to close the bay doors as soon as we pull in.”

“Roger that,” crackled over the speaker.

They sailed the mule right into the open cargo bay, and 42 cottonheads tumbled in right behind them. The outer doors slammed shut.

And that was when everyone realized that they had failed to plan very carefully for how to calm all the randy cottonheads once they were on board. Within a few moments they had all descended on Puck again, and Puck just curled up on the floor and covered his head with his hands.

“I told you they’re dangerous!” he shrieked. “Let’s think this through, I said. Are we sure we want to transport live animals, I said. But did anyone listen? No! It’s a lot of money, they said. Well sure, choose the money over my life. I see how it is.”

“Puck,” a voice called from outside the blur of feathers that filled Puck’s vision. “Lead them into the cage area.”

Right, as though that were a simple request.

But Puck was no quitter, so he rolled over to his hands and knees and started crawling as fast as he could into the large caged-off area they had created for transporting the birds. Hundreds of pounds of birds continued to land on him, perch on him, jump on him, caw loudly, and flap their wings in his personal space. He got inside the cage, and all the cottonheads seemed to be following (as far as he could tell), but then when he tried to get himself back out of the cage they all followed him right back out.

“Gorram birds!” Puck spat. “At least tell me we can eat one of them for dinner. This is a lot of trouble that I didn’t sign up for.”

A number of the cottonheads had wandered off to different parts of the cargo bay now. They were perching on the railings, the stairs, the mule, and (of course) still on Puck. Everyone in the room was chasing birds, unsuccessfully trying to catch them and wrestle them into the cage.

“So what now?” Puck asked of no one in particular.

“Stand still,” said a soft voice behind his ear, and Puck turned to see Brittany, clad in her nightgown and bare feet, with her hair fluttering around her shoulders as the birds ran and flapped around her.

“Sure, fine by me,” Puck assured her as he gestured around the room. “You think you can catch these things? Cuz ain’t nobody else havin’ much luck…”

“Shhhh,” Brittany hissed. Her eyes darted around the room a few times, and then she turned to face Puck. “When I say, move fourteen inches to the left.”

“What?”

“Just do it.” And she was off. Brittany was fast--this didn’t surprise Puck at all. But what did surprise him was that she apparently could fly, or talk to cottonheads, or something. What other explanation was there for the way that she leapt round the room, grabbing a bird here, tossing it at another there, pushing crates in front of others to force them to change directions, and swinging from the railings shooing along every cottonhead that had perched there. “Now, Puck!” she hollered, and he stepped to the left just in time for her to dart past him and shut the cage door.

In less than a minute Brittany had every single animal contained.

Puck scratched his head. “So I take it that’s a ‘no’ on having one of them for dinner then?”

“Take a shower, Puck,” Brittany said sweetly. “There’s droppings all over you.” She (still immaculately clean) started humming a song to herself and danced off down the hallway.

Later, after his shower, Puck sat in the infirmary with Finn and Mike and told them about the whole thing.

Finn kept laughing, no matter how often Puck insisted that it wasn’t funny. “This is not at all how Kurt explained it.”

“Don’t listen to what Kurt says! He wasn’t the one that got attacked and he doesn’t appreciate how serious it was!”

“Uh-huh,” Finn said. “Well, my days o’ not takin’ you seriously are certainly comin’ to a middle.”

Puck decided to change the subject.

“So, Mike, what’s up with Brittany? Did you have a farm back home or somethin’? Is that how she was able to catch them all so fast?”

“No,” Mike said thoughtfully. “We never had a farm. But Brittany is a genius, in her own way. I don’t fully understand it myself, but I know that she is good at seeing things that other people don’t see, or at seeing things faster than others do.” He wiped his hands on his apron and hung it up. “I expect that she looked at the situation, calculated the direction and velocity of each animal, and then created a plan for intercepting or redirecting each one to get them into the cage.”

“Calcu-latu-what-huh?” Puck asked.

“In three seconds?” Finn looked impressed.

“Yes,” Mike said simply.

“It’s no wonder the Alliance wants her back,” Finn whispered.

Mike nodded.

“I kinda like having her on our side,” Puck said.

Chapter Text

Sam flipped the switch to autopilot and leaned back in his chair. In a few minutes he’d have to return to manually flying for the landing, but he always liked to take a short breather to stretch and get his game face on before beginning a descent. He usually preferred to fly manually--or at least stay in the cockpit and keep an eye on everything--it helped him stay in touch with the ship and what she was doing. He swore she could talk to him, and he most definitely talked with her.

He stroked the console fondly and stood up, reaching his arms overhead and bending to one side and the other.

“Dear?” The voice behind him made him spin around, but he grinned just as quickly when he saw his wife coming into the cockpit.

“Yes sweetums?”

She held up a plastic dinosaur. “Any explanation as to why this fella was on the floor in our quarters, waiting to ambush my feet when I got up this morning?”

Sam cringed guiltily. “Because I dropped him?”

“I thought he lived up here.” She put it on the console with a sharp thwack . “Where he can betray and eat the other dinosaur.”

“No this is the one that gets betrayed,” Sam corrected her. “That one’s an herbivore--”

“And they’ve all been extinct for millions of years so it doesn’t really matter, does it.” She stretched up on her toes and placed a little kiss on his neck.

“Well birds are the modern descendants of dinosaurs, so it depends how you look at it.”

“After his encounter with those cottonheads I’m sure Puck would believe it.” A smile slipped onto Mercedes’ face and Sam glowed with pride. He loved that he could make her smile when so few people could.

“Anyway, the captains are wondering if we’re getting close to Harvest yet?”

Sam nodded. “I’ll be starting the descent in a few minutes.”

“I’ll let them know.” And with a quick squeeze she was off again.

Sam cracked his neck, back, and knuckles, then settled back into his chair and switched the controls back to manual to begin the descent. He had noticed earlier that it looked like there were some storms on the surface of the planet, but Sam didn’t usually worry about that kind of thing. Sure, the ride might get a little bumpy but that was no big deal. He had landed in all kinds of weather before.

Well, maybe not all kinds. The closer he got to Harvest the more he started to be concerned about the sheer size of the storm system he was about to fly into. As he breached the atmosphere he could feel winds pulling at the ship and he promptly picked up the com.

“Ladies and gentlemen, this is your pilot speaking. I’d just like to let you know that you should sit down and hold onto something, because this landing is probably gonna get pretty interesting.”

“Define interesting,” Finn’s voice crackled back through the speaker.

“Oh god oh god we’re all gonna die?” Sam said flatly, but then he dropped the com because he needed to hold onto the controls.

Of course they didn’t die, but it was definitely one of the bumpier landings Sam had ever flown. Maybe the bumpiest. Mercedes told him later that several people had been sick, but she wouldn’t tell him who. That meant one of the captains, for sure. Maybe both.

Probably both.

Sam wasn’t part of the landing party; he rarely was. Usually he and Tina stayed aboard the ship to tune things up, wash things down, or just generally sit around and wait until it was time to fly again.

He didn’t mind too much though, because it gave him time to read, and think, and play with the dinosaurs. Mercedes had teased him about the dinosaurs at first, but she stopped after he explained that when he went to flight school his little brother and sister had given them to him as a present to remember them by. None of his family had survived the war, and the dinosaurs were all he had left. They had accompanied him on every flight he’d ever flown, and he wasn’t about to change something that was clearly working.

Today when Mercedes, Kurt, Finn, and Puck returned from the meetup they were all cranky.

“What’s wrong?” Sam asked his wife. “Did something go wrong with the deal?”

She sighed. “No, the deal is fine. We’re taking some cargo to Newhall. Pretty routine.”

“What’s the cargo?”

“I didn’t ask. The men who hired us are the local law enforcement, and we’re taking the goods to similar folk on Newhall, so it all seems fairly above board.”

“So why are you upset?”

She took a long breath through her nose and let it out slowly. “As much as I don’t like the Alliance, they do keep a kind of order to things. They don’t really have a presence here, and you might think that’s a good thing, but it ain’t.”

“How’s that?”

“The local law here, they call them ‘Peacekeepers,’ and they rule with a hard hand. I’ve never seen townfolk so timid. I kept havin’ the feeling that there’s somethin’ more here than meets the eye, but I don’t know what it is.”

“Every planet has its troubles, Mercedes, and you can’t fix them all. We don’t have to stay here long. Did you guys find the contact and get the goods?”

“Yes, they already dropped off some things and they said they’re bringing two more crates in the morning. We’re taking them to Newhall.”

“ Gao yang jong duh goo yang ! That’s more than a month from here!”

“I know. But it’s only a few crates. They won’t be in the way and we can still take other things in the meantime.”

“What’s in them?”

“I have no idea. They didn’t say and we didn’t ask: sometimes it’s better not knowin’.”

Some moons and planets were fairly close together, but here in the border parts they tended to be farther apart. They made occasional stops for fuel or food when there was a planet, but there were also long hauls of days or sometimes weeks between times. Sam still spent a lot of time in the cockpit but it was mostly out of habit, because he did a lot more daydreaming than driving on those kinds of days.

His favorite daydream was the one about when he and Mercedes got married.

Sam and Mercedes had hit it off immediately after he had joined the crew. They quickly found that the attraction was mutual, and didn’t bother trying to hide it from anyone. Within a few months they moved into shared quarters.

“Might as well free up a room for a paying passenger,” Sam explained to the captains. “Since we’re not going to use it. Plus her room is bigger and it’s closer to the cockpit which is convenient for me.”

“It’s two doors over,” Kurt smirked, and Finn laughed, but they both helped carry Sam’s things to Mercedes’ officer’s quarters. The next week they found a paying passenger and he moved into Sam’s old room.

“He’s a preacher, did you see?” Sam asked Mercedes a few days later.

“I saw the Shepherd’s collar, yes.”

“He won’t be here much longer; he’s just going to Haven.”

“So?”

Mercedes was clearly not catching his hints, so Sam switched to obvious. He took her hands in his and dropped to his knee. “Marry me.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Marry me, Mercedes. This is an unpredictable life in an unpredictable ‘verse, and I never know what will come next year or next week or even tomorrow, but I do know that I want to be with you when it does. So let’s get married. Right now, while we have a Shepherd here who can do it for us.”

Mercedes stared at him, expressionless and unmoving, for what felt like forever. Then she said “ok.”

“Really?” Sam jumped to his feet.

“There’s nothing like battle to teach you to make a big decision quickly, Sam. I never realized it would apply to this kind of situation but apparently it does.” Then she laughed. Then Sam started laughing. By the time they had rounded up Kurt, Finn, and Tina, and dragged them all to the Shepherd’s room to ask him if he’d mind terribly doing an impromptu wedding they were both laughing so hard that the Shepherd made them all do ten minutes of silent meditation before he would start the ceremony. It was ‘to make sure they were ready for the significance of the occasion,’ he said, but Sam secretly suspected it was because he thought they were drunk.

They hadn’t been, of course, but less than an hour after getting engaged Sam and Mercedes found themselves a married couple climbing down the ladder into their quarters for their honeymoon. As a wedding present Finn and Kurt gave them three days off (“but then we’ll need you to come out to land the ship,” Finn said apologetically). All things considered, they might never have this much time to themselves again; but for now they had three days, and Sam was thankful for it.

A familiar hand on his arm broke him out of his reverie, and he realized that both Mercedes and Finn were in the cockpit with him. He looked up and his gaze met hers and he knew she knew what he’d been thinking about. He’d told her it was his favorite daydream.

“Captain,” she said.

“Yes?”

Mercedes slid her hand down Sam’s arm until she could grab his hand. Then she pulled him out of the chair and moved purposefully toward the door. “I need you to take the helm, Sir. I need this man to tear all my clothes off.”

Sam grinned as she dragged him away. “Work, work, work!”

Finn just shook his head fondly and settled into the pilot’s chair.

A couple of days later they stumbled across an Alliance Checkpoint. Contrary to what the name implied, Checkpoints were not fixed locations, but rather behemoth ships that slowly stalked through the outer reaches of the ‘verse looking for trouble and trying to quelch it. It was supposed to ‘improve the safety and security of those areas less connected to the inner planets,’ but the reality was that the staff in Checkpoints were usually inclined to use handcuffs first and worry about charges later. They tended to assume that everyone was a criminal unless proven innocent, rather than the other way around. And when one’s ship was carrying less than completely honest cargo, things could go sour quickly.

So when Sam saw the massive tower hovering in space his first thought was to avoid letting Bounty be seen; once the Checkpoint bridge hailed him, he knew he had no choice but to go in. Fleeing was a sure sign of guilt in these parts. So, instead, he summoned Finn.

“Damn Checkpoints,” Finn muttered when he heard the information. “Follow whatever they tell you. I’ll hide the contraband.”

Fifteen minutes later Sam stood with the rest of the crew in the main cargo bay, waiting to be boarded by Alliance soldiers.

“Be polite,” Finn reminded everyone. “We have nothing to hide.”

“Except Mike and Brittney and those two crates we stuck in there with ‘em,” Puck blurted.

“Nothing to hide,” Kurt repeated through gritted teeth. Blaine stroked his arm and it seemed to sooth him.

“We will let them inspect almost any corner of this boat,” Finn said calmly. “The only place we need to protect is the one compartment, and seein’ as it’s directly under our feet here, I think we can distract them from finding it.”

“I don’t want nobody rootin’ around in my bunk neither,” Puck announced.

“Anyone who goes through Puck’s bunk deserves whatever they find,” Mercedes noted, and Sam stifled a snicker.

The door opened and a very uptight-looking Alliance officer strutted in with a few armed guards behind him.

“What is your cargo and destination?” he asked in a bored tone.

Finn handed over the manifest for the legal cargo they had. “We’re just taking some clothes and sundries from Harvest to Newhall,” he said smoothly, pointing to a pile of cargo. “They’re in those crates there. I can open one up for you if you’d like, but I will warn you that crates from Harvest often have vermin in ‘em, if you know what I mean…”

A couple of the guards wrinkled their noses.

“We’re going to need to inspect your ship,” the officer said in the same bored tone, shoving the papers back at Finn without even looking at them.

“Is that strictly necessary?” Kurt asked.

“Who are you?”

“Kurt Hummel, Sir. Co-owner and co-captain of this ship with my brother here.”

The Alliance man looked back and forth between Kurt and Finn for a minute, then he snorted. “If you’re brothers then I’m *you zha de ban qiu.”

(Sam was very proud of himself for keeping a straight face at that comparison.)

“I don’t owe you an explanation,” the officer continued. “But, in fact, it is strictly necessary. We have a flag in our system for a Firefly-class ship that left Pandora a while back carrying some fugitives. This is a Firefly, so we’re going to look for them.”

The officer motioned for his guards to split up and go through the ship. They trotted off in pairs and Sam heard them throwing things around. The officer and his remaining guards paced around the hold, waiting for the others to come back. Sam and the rest of the crew did their best to appear as neutral as possible.

Finally the ship-searchers returned and one of them whispered something in the officer’s ear. He nodded curtly then turned to the crew.

“It appears that you’re all in order.” He spat on the floor. “Maybe you should get yourself a better ship instead of this rusty old bag of bolts. If you’re legitimate folk, you should fly a ship that looks like it.”

“Yessir, thank you sir,” Finn said.

The Alliance men exited the ship, and Mercedes closed the door behind them. She watched through the window until they were out of sight, then leaned against it and sighed with relief.

“I can’t believe they said that about Bounty ,” Tina said indignantly. She patted a post affectionately. “You’re a beautiful ship, you are,” she murmured.

“Sam, get us out of here,” Kurt instructed, and Sam headed for the cockpit. They had barely cleared the Checkpoint’s airspace though when Mercedes burst in.

“Sam, baby, you’ve got to see this.”

Mildly alarmed, Sam turned on the autopilot and followed her back into the hold where everyone was gathered in a semi-circle. The pile of crates was spread around the room now, revealing the trap door that had been hiding beneath them. The door was open, and inside was an open crate with some kind of steam or smoke pouring out; beside the crate sat Brittany, cradling something in her lap. It was about the size of a cat, but--

“It’s a dinosaur!” Sam said in awe. “I mean, it can’t be--it’s like something out of science fiction--but…”

“We do live on a spaceship, dear,” Mercedes said dryly. “But yes, size notwithstanding, it appears to be a dinosaur.”

“It seems to have been frozen in cryosleep,” Mike explained. “I was so focused on keeping Brittany quiet that I didn’t realize she was fiddling with the latch until she had already opened it. I tried to motion for her to leave it alone, but I didn’t dare make noise and she just ignored me.”

“His name is Lord Tubbington,” Brittany announced, gently stroking the reptile in her lap. Tina stepped close and reached out toward it but the creature hissed and snapped at her and she jumped back.

“The pieces are starting to come together…” Kurt’s voice was thoughtful.

Sam watched Kurt and Mercedes make eye contact and saw something pass between them that he couldn’t read. Then they spoke in a series of disjointed phrases that no one could really follow except themselves.

“Do you think?”

“It makes sense--”

“ Shun-sheng duh gao-wahn !”

“No wonder they cowered.”

“Yeah.”

“I’m sorry, can you share with the class?” Sam finally blurted. He knew that Mercedes and Kurt had been friends since long before he had known them, and he knew that Kurt wasn’t a threat to their romantic relationship, but sometimes he did get a little jealous of the other intimacy that existed between them.

“The lawmen on Harvest,” Mercedes explained. “They’re using these...creatures. That’s why they have such control; why the people fear.”

“They’re genetically modified; they have to be,” Mike observed. He looked fascinated, and not nearly as cautious as Sam thought he should. “Nothing like this is natural. But these… I’ll bet they eat less and run faster than dogs would. It’s probably terribly efficient. For all we know they could even be poisonous.”

Puck stepped back a bit at that.

“They can call themselves ‘Peacekeepers’ all they want,” Mercedes huffed. “I can tell you five ways from Sunday that the only thing being kept on that planet is control.”

“I guess Harvest being a border planet means that they don’t much care that the Alliance has outlawed genetic modification,” Sam observed.

“I expect so,” Kurt agreed.

“And they were trying to get them to another planet.”

“And we were helping,” Mercedes choked (she sounded like she was about to be sick).

A clacking noise came from the open crate and they all turned their attention just in time to see a little green head pop up above the rim.

“Lady Tubbington!” Brittany squealed, holding her hands out eagerly to the second little monster.

After they had padlocked the second crate, and settled Brittany and the two beasts into her room with Tina standing as first guard outside, the remaining crew gathered in the common area to discuss the situation.

“We can’t deliver them to Newhall,” Mercedes insisted. “It seems they are using these things to terrorize Harvest and there’s no way we can be part of expanding that. It goes against everything we stood for in the war.”

“I didn’t stand in no war,” Puck interjected. “But them creatures are creepy so I vote we get rid of ‘em.”

“They’re GMOs,” Kurt pointed out. “They’re illegal. If we try to sell them on an Alliance planet we’ll be arrested. If we deliver them to the people we’re contracted to, Mercedes is right, they’ll wreck havoc with them. Probably we should just shoot ‘em.”

“It’s not their fault that they exist,” Mike said softly. “Death is a cruel sentence to pass on a creature that hasn’t done anything yet.

Sam agreed with that (and he was a little tickled at real, live, tiny dinosaurs), but he didn’t know what else to do. “Do we have any alternatives?”

“There’s a refuge on Angel,” Blaine said. “That’s the same system as Newhall so we’re already on our way there.”

“What kind of refuge?” Kurt asked.

“For genetically modified animals. The Alliance outlawed them because too many had developed weaknesses or caused problems, but many of them still exist even without new ones being made. And since it’s not legal to own one, the refuge is officially a hospital...it’s just that nobody ever comes to pick up the creatures after they drop them off.”

“You think they’d take monsters like this?” Mercedes asked bluntly.

“Maybe they’re not monsters unless they’re trained to be,” Sam suggested. “They seem to like Brittany well enough.”

“One near took Tina’s hand off,” Puck reminded him.

“It didn’t exactly--”

“Don’t tell me what I didn’t see!”

Sam put his hands up defensively. “Ok, fine. And they will probably come eat our toes while we sleep tonight.”

Puck got fidgety. “Do ya think so? I can lock my door. Do ya think they can pick locks?”

Mercedes groaned in exasperation. Sam knew that tone.

“All in favor of taking the creatures to the refuge?” Finn asked. Several hands went up.

“All in favor of just shooting them?” Puck’s hand shot up, and Mercedes’ slowly raised hers as well.

Sam pouted at her, “But dinosaurs, sweetheart!”

“But vicious killers, dear!”

Finn looked around appraisingly. “It looks like we’re taking them to the refuge.” He paused for a moment, then added darkly, “after which we will return to Harvest and be mighty convincin’ to those so-called Peacekeepers so they won’t be wantin’ to make no more.”

All of which is precisely what they did. It took more than twice as long as they’d originally expected, since they had to double-back to Harvest for the convincin’ part, with a detour to avoid the Checkpoint.  The Peacekeepers on Harvest weren’t particularly keen on the suggestion that they change their way of doin’ things, however Puck and Finn explained things to them in that special way they had, and Sam only heard seven gunshots so by his reckoning it must have gone pretty smooth.

Chapter Text

“Tell me again why we are doing this?”

Kurt went over it again, forcing himself to act like he wasn’t fuming, even though he knew Mercedes would see right through him. “The culture on this planet is obsessively heteronormative to the point that contracts and business transactions may only be conducted by acceptably married persons. And since we have business to conduct here and you and I are the only decent negotiators on our team then we’re pretending to be married.”

“To each other.”

“Yes.”

He hated this gorram planet so much.

“It’s just business,” Blaine assured him as he folded something made of rich fabric and laid it in a carrying case. “You have your business, just as I have mine. We do what we do, we get paid, and we come home to each other.”

Kurt nodded although his insides twisted. Sometimes he wished he could be as casual about things as Blaine seemed to be able to be.

Blaine snapped the case shut and turned to face Kurt. “I have several clients scheduled in the days we are here. I don’t know if our paths will cross, but this isn’t a particularly large city so they might. And if they do, please pretend you don’t know me. My clients generally like to think that they are the sole recipient of my affections.

Kurt scoffed. “You’re a companion!”

Blaine grinned. “I know. But people like their delusions. And they pay well for them, so--” he shrugged and picked up his case. “I’ll see you in four days, Kurt.”

He leaned over and pressed his lips softly to Kurt’s on his way out the door and then he was gone.

Kurt loved this man, and he had no problem with the profession (in a general, ethical sense), but he sure didn’t like sharing his boyfriend with other people.

“Can I help you?” Kurt asked the woman standing at the door of the ship. She was blonde, with delicate features and a bundle of cloth in her arms.

“My name is Quinn, and I’m here to see Captain Finn.”

Kurt looked her up and down. He knew that appearances could be deceiving, but Quinn really didn’t look like she posed any danger to a man like Finn.

“I’ll take you to him, but you’ll have to leave your bundle here. Standard procedure you understand.”

She shook her head vehemently and clutched the bundle to her chest. “I can meet him somewhere else if necessary, but I don’t leave my bundle with anyone.”

Kurt furrowed his brow. “Why? What’s in it?”

Quinn glanced out up and down the street, then stepped in closer to the doorway and carefully lifted one of the clothes to reveal the face of a baby.

“Miss, I’m not sure what you want with Finn, but he’s not in the habit of taking in--”

“Just let me talk to him, please?”

Kurt was pretty sure that Finn would be annoyed with him later, but this woman was persistent and he really was supposed to be meeting with Mercedes now. So he invited her in, led her down the passageway to where she could meet with Finn, then went to find his fake wife.

“Maybe we should practice this, so we can do it without breaking character,” Mercedes suggested. “Because I keep crackin’ up and we definitely cannot do that when we are meeting with that dealer, what’s her name?”

“Sylvester.”

“What does she have for us again?”

“It’s just textiles, actually,” Kurt was pleased to inform her. “They’re valuable because she holds a monopoly and only releases a few at a time. But these ones are actually legal so that’s nice. And she’s paying us a ridiculous rate to transport them.”

“That right there makes it worth whatever fakin’ we have to do,” Mercedes agreed. She always had preferred the legal transactions. “Alright, husband , look at me like you want to take me right here right now.”

Kurt laughed so hard he snorted. Oh this was going to hard.

“What was all that about?” Kurt asked Finn later. “Who was that girl?”

“Remember when we helped Blaine’s friend Santana?”

“Yeah?”

“Quinn was one of the women there.”

“Oh,” Kurt said slowly as the pieces fell into place in his head. “I thought she looked sorta familiar but I couldn’t place her. So why’d she come here?”

“Well she has that baby, obviously.”

“Yeah?”

“And she says it’s mine.”

Kurt regarded his brother carefully. “Does she now?”

Finn nodded. “It’s not.”

“How can you be sure?”

“Because I never touched her.”

“A lot of people touched a lot of people that week Finn. Are you sure?”

“Sure I’m sure!” Finn spat. “You know better than anyone that I’ve only ever loved one person.”

Kurt’s voice softened, and maybe he should have held his tongue but he’d watched his brother in this pain for years and he had always been a blunt sort of person. “Rachel is dead, Finn. It’s ok to move on you know.”

“I know, Kurt. I know it is. But, I swear, I didn’t. Not with Quinn.”

“So did you send her packing?”

“I tried, but I suspect she’ll be back. She went to a lot of work to find us. She’s not going to give up easily.”

Kurt nodded slowly. “Well, good luck.”

Kurt and Mercedes stood side by side in Sue Sylvester’s office because the only chair in the room was the one behind the large, intricately carved desk. The woman herself sat there, and peered at them through squinted eyes. She looked at the papers in her hand, and then back at them.

“You said you’re married?”

“Yes ma’m,” Kurt threw an arm around Mercedes’ waist and pulled her closer to him. Her feet skittered a little as she scooted over.

Mrs. Sylvester was still staring, so Kurt hurriedly donned a smile.

“Mmm-mmm.” Mrs. Sylvester flipped over a page, and then another, all the while looking at them rather than the pages.

“How long’ve you been married?” she asked, looking at the papers again.

“Three years,” Mercedes’s answer came easily for her, and Kurt was grateful for it. Why had he not thought about details like that when he made this plan? Stupid, stupid!

“Uuuh-huh.” She squinted at them again for a moment and returned to the papers. There wasn’t that much written on them, Kurt didn’t know why it was taking her so long to review them. Eventually, however, she seemed satisfied with the papers. She dropped the papers on the desk and stood, placing her hands on either side of the pages and leaning over the desk as though getting her face a few inches closer to theirs might help somehow.

“Alright, here’s the deal. I have eighteen bolts of limited edition silk, woven by deaf orphans and hand-painted by carefully trained spider monkeys. Every piece is unique and it’s in high demand in the central planets. Normally I only release two or three bolts at a time so that the prices stay up, but you seem like shrewd negotiators, so I’m going to trust you with four. You pay me upfront and then you sell them for whatever you can get for them. It shouldn’t be too hard for you.”

“Originally the deal was that you pay me a flat rate to transport them to a seller you’ve arranged in advance,” Kurt said, taken off guard by the sudden change in direction from Mrs. Sylvester.

“Yeah, well maybe I didn’t find a seller yet.” She shrugged. “No, actually I just want my money up front. I don’t like taking risks and I decided this is a risk. I don’t know you at all, why should I trust you?” Her voice was getting shriller and Kurt was pretty sure she hadn’t stopped to breathe in at least a minute. “For all I know you’re not even married to that girl. You’re awfully stiff with her. Maybe you just picked her up off the street and promised to pay her off if she’d pretend with you for an hour!”

Kurt was both offended and terrified. If he was that bad an actor then this whole deal was probably going to blow up in their faces in three...two…

Mercedes twisted in his grasp and grabbed his face with both of her hands, planting a hard, wet kiss on his lips. Kurt gasped in shock before he got his head back and forced himself to stop squirming and kiss her back. It was weird, mixing the excitation of an unexpected kiss and the intimacy of a genuine fondness with the awkwardness of kissing someone he wasn’t actually attracted to. He held onto it for what he hoped was long enough and then pulled back to find Mrs. Sylvester watching them with an undecipherable expression.

She thrust a paper at him. “You’d better sign this before I change my mind,” she said. “I’ll pay you fifty now, and Smithwick will pay you the rest when you drop it off to him on Ariel.”

Kurt signed quickly. “Thank you Mrs. Sylvester.”

She sniffed and wrinkled her nose. “Call me Sue.”

“I thought she was gonna back out,” Kurt admitted to Mercedes as they walked back after. “I don’t know what possessed you to kiss me but I think it sealed the deal. So thank you. Also don’t ever do it again.”

“Oh don’t worry, I don’t plan to.” She giggled. “We probably shouldn’t tell Sam either; I expect he’d feel obliged to threaten you or something.”

Their hands were clasped as they walked, and he gave her an affectionate squeeze. “I can’t wait to just be done on this planet and leave.”

“You just want to hold hands with Blaine instead of me,” Mercedes teased, and Kurt grinned sheepishly.

“Well, I--” Kurt stopped mid sentence and he sucked in a breath. “Speak of the devil…”

“Wha--oh.” Mercedes saw too. Walking along on the opposite side of the street was Blaine and someone who was undoubtedly his client. The client was tall and slender, with a wide smile and sandy brown hair swept up in an elaborate coif. His clothing was complicated and obviously expensive, and Kurt instantly hated him. Next to this man, Blaine’s genteel elegance looked understated or even bland.

For an instant Kurt’s eyes met Blaine, and he hurriedly looked away. They had talked about this; he couldn’t compromise Blaine. But the other man must have seen the glance because abruptly he grabbed Blaine’s hand and dragged him across the street to come toe to toe with them.

“Who do you think you are?” the tall man hissed in Kurt’s face. “This man is mine, I paid for him today and while he’s mine no one else can look at him.”

Blaine looked like he wanted to crawl into a hole.

Kurt carefully avoided looking at his lover directly; instead focusing on the rude man in front of him. “I was minding my own business over here and happened to glance that way at the same time he glanced this way. He’s a person. People glance.”

“He’s not a person, he’s a companion.” The tall man’s voice was getting loud and passersby were stopping to watch them. “And when Sebastian Smythe pays for a thing he does not share it with anyone.” His grip on Blaine’s arm was getting tighter, but Blaine’s perfectly schooled face didn’t give away the pain he must be feeling. Kurt gritted his teeth.

Sebastian, apparently, was too observant for his own good. “Wait, you weren’t just looking. You know him, don’t you?” His wide mouth broke into a salacious grin and he nodded toward Mercedes, who was gripping Kurt’s hand tightly. “Does your little wife know that you step out with men on the side?” (A collective gasp rose from the assemblage, followed by whispers and mutterings.)

“Sebastian, please, let it go,” Blaine said flatly. “I’m with you today, it doesn’t matter who I’ve been with on other days.”

Sebastian turned to face the companion now. “Ah, so you admit it! That’s tacky; I didn’t think companions were supposed to reveal who their clients were.”

“Sinner!!” a voice shrieked from the crowd, immediately followed by others. “Dirty homosexuals!” “Devil spawn!” “Get out!”

Kurt was shocked that Sebastian would out himself in a place like this just to hurt someone else, then he realized something which Sebastian promptly confirmed.

“Oh I’ve hurt you now, haven’t I. You’ll never work here again, sinner ,” he sneered at Blaine. Nobody cares that I’m gay. It’s the worst kept secret in town. Everyone knows--except my wife of course--but I own everything so it doesn’t matter.”

“You sick bastard,” Kurt spat. “No decent man would--”

“You question my honor?!”

Kurt puffed out his chest and stepped forward. “I do.”

“Then I demand satisfaction!”

“Fine.”

“Fine! Tomorrow, an hour after dawn, at the river on the east edge of town.” Sebastian spun and strode away, most of the crowd made themselves scarce with remarkable speed. Kurt felt slightly shellshocked.

“Oh my god, Kurt,” Blaine’s voice said next to him.

“What? What just happened?”

“You just agreed to duel with him in the morning.”

“Oh. Huh. Well whaddya know. I guess I’m as quick with my gun as--”

“Kurt.”

“What?”

“They duel with swords here. Sebastian is known across four planets for his swordplay. He’s going to kill you.”

Back at the ship all Kurt could do was pace. Blaine had promised to help him with his sword skills later, but Kurt had a feeling that there wasn’t a possible way to help enough. He was going to die tomorrow and all because he couldn’t keep his mouth shut.

Blaine was an adult. He had chosen his profession and he understood what went with it. Companions had the legal right to accept or deny any client, so if he had accepted a contract with Sebastian there must have been some reason for it. Kurt was also an adult, and he had chosen Blaine with full knowledge of what his profession was. Sometimes he wondered if he would have made the same choice if he had known how it was going to feel, but it was too late to go back now. He was all in with this man and he might be about to die for it and if that wasn’t a romantic ending, he didn’t know what was.

Kurt heard raised voices around the corner and stopped abruptly, trying to decipher what was going on before he walked into it.

“It’s mine, ain’t it.” That was Puck’s voice.

“I think so. It’s certainly not his. That’s not possible.” The second voice belonged to a woman, and sounded familiar but Kurt couldn’t place it.

“Why did you come to him then?”

“Because he is the captain. He has money and power and he can take care of us. You can’t.”

“Hey, I get paid too,” Puck insisted. “If that’s my kid and you come to me, I’d do right by you both.”

Oh, so that’s who it was.

“I don’t want anything from you,” the woman said curtly. “Captain Finn has honor. That will last longer than anything you promise me.”

After the day he’d had, Kurt wasn’t going to get stuck in this. He turned the other way and got out of there.

Kurt knew that sleep was probably a good idea on the night before a duel, but he was too restless to sleep. Besides, if he died it wouldn’t matter if he’d slept; it made more sense to do whatever he could to get a chance at winning.

Blaine spent the evening with him in the shuttle going over the rules of dueling.

“It seems simple enough,” Kurt observed. “Stick the pointy end in the other guy; don’t let him stick me.”

Blaine grimaced. “It’s one thing in theory, Kurt, but it’s something else to enact.” He picked up a slender sword and placed it in Kurt’s hand, slipping around behind him and pressing his body to Kurt’s, sliding his fingers around Kurt’s to grasp the sword with him. He whispered in his ear “we should practice.”

And practice they did. Footwork like dancing, controlled thrusts and slashes with the blade. Blaine alternated between guiding Kurt from behind and facing off against him from in front. As the hours progressed their activity raised the temperature of the room until they shed their jackets, waistcoats, and even shirts. Still they practiced. Move together, move against each other. Thrust, parry, spin, duck, swing, jump, slash, block. The low, warm lighting of Blaine’s shuttle made their sweating skin glisten as they moved through the careful choreography of swordplay until, eventually, they both collapsed on the bed and slept, curled around each other like it was the last time. For all they knew, it was

The next morning dawned bright and clear. Mercedes had stayed at the ship to oversee the loading of Mrs. Sylvester’s cargo, and Finn, Sam, and Puck were with her. (Brittany was holed up in her room and hadn’t come out since they had taken Lord Tubbington away.) However Blaine, Mike, and Tina went with Kurt to the designated dueling ground.

On the way Kurt finally forced himself to ask something that had been nagging at him all night. “In case this doesn’t end well, I need to ask you something, Blaine.”

“Anything, Kurt. You know I will always answer you.”

“Why did you accept his contract? Why do you ever accept contracts with people like him? A respectable companion like you could choose anyone. Why him?”

Blaine pursed his lips for a moment. “Sometimes it’s the pay; some people offer sums much higher than the going rate and that’s hard to turn down.”

“And Sebastian? Does he pay you well enough to be treated that way? He insulted you! He said you weren’t even a person!”

“He’s not like that in private, Kurt. He has an image to maintain on this planet and I understand that. But I also know that underneath the public cruelty is a man who has a private pain over not being able to be be with someone he loves.”

“Why doesn’t he just leave? Go to another planet where he wouldn’t have to hide who he is?”

“The ‘verse is a complicated place, Kurt. Everyone has choices to make, and most of them are not simple ones.”

“So you took Sebastian’s contract because…?”

“Because it’s my choice, Kurt. Being a companion is not just about money, nor sex. It’s about companionship. And sometimes the people who are most in need of a companion are the ones who might seem the least deserving.”

Kurt shook his head. As much as he’d wanted an answer he wasn’t sure if he felt any better for having gotten one. He might have pursued it further in an attempt to find something more satisfactory, but they arrived at the dueling ground and he was out of time.

Sebastian removed his jacket, scarf, and gloves, and handed them to a broad-shouldered blond man. He unsheathed his sword and swung it around a few times, light-footed and agile as he moved.

Kurt shook out his arms and twisted his neck, trying to release his nerves and relax. Watching Sebastian warm up, lithe and supple, was not encouraging for Kurt. He knew his best chance was to surprise him in some way, because if it came down to pure technique Kurt didn’t stand a chance. He took off his jacket and handed it to Tina. “Hold this please; don’t let it get dirty. I plan to be wantin’ it back.”

“Yessir Capt’n Tightpants.”

“Shall we begin?” Sebastian called, gesturing to the open grassy area between them. Kurt joined him in the center. They stood back to back, counted off paces, then turned to face each other again. Sebastian took a wide stance with his sword arm extended, and Kurt mirrored it.

Slowly they circled each other, each man measuring up the other in the interminable moments before one stepped in and made the first swing.

Kurt managed to make contact with Sebastian’s waistcoat early on, and even though he didn’t draw blood he did cut the fabric, so it felt like it should count for something. They danced back and forth, metal glinting in the morning sun, steel ringing above the quiet songs of birds. For someone known across four planets for his swordplay, Sebastian sure didn’t seem to be anything special… which was when Kurt realized that he was just playing with him. The realization came just as Sebastian spun and twisted, and Kurt felt a sharp pain in his shoulder.

There was a murmur of voices--Kurt heard them but he couldn’t pick out any words. The pain was distracting, and made his eyes water.

“You can forfeit, if you want,” Sebastian said. “I mean I’ll have to kill ya, but I’ll do it quick-like so it doesn’t hurt.” He grinned. “Not too much, anyway.”

Kurt gritted his teeth and wiped his sleeve across his face. He was going to finish this even if it killed him--and it was probably going to kill him--but he was no quitter. He shook his head.

“Fine, have it your way.” Sebastian spat, swinging his sword in a jaunty little flourish. That moment of distraction was the opening Kurt needed, and he thrust hard and stabbed Sebastian in the side.

Sebastian gasped, and stepped back. Kurt followed and swung sharply, slicing neatly across Sebastian’s arm and leaving behind a streak of blood. This experience was clearly a new one for Sebastian, as he stumbled, and then fell.

“He’s down,” a voice called.

Kurt stood over him with his sword pointed at his foe’s chest.

“You have to finish it,” Blaine’s voice was just behind him. “To leave a man bloodied and on the ground but still breathing--it makes him a coward. It’s humiliation.”

“I’m sure it’s humiliating,” Kurt agreed. “Having to lie there while the better man refuses to spill your blood. And I know that’s the way on this planet. But I’m not from this planet, and I’ve seen enough killin’ in my life to not feel the need to do it when the lesson has been learned.” He glared down at Sebastian. “Mercy is the mark of a great man.”

Kurt started to go, but Sebastian grabbed at his ankle and Kurt spun back and jabbed his sword into Sebastian’s shoulder. “Guess I’m just a good man.” Then, on a whim, he jabbed the other shoulder for good measure. “Well, I’m alright.”

Kurt teetered a little, the blood loss from his shoulder starting to get to him. Blaine steadied him.

“You’ll never work on this planet again,” Sebastian sneered at Blaine.

Blaine turned back to him and smiled. “I know. But that’s ok, because I’ve marked you in the registry, so you’ll never be able to hire a companion again.”

Kurt snorted. “You mean he’s going to have to rely on his charming personality?”

Blaine nodded.

Mike approached and briefly examined Kurt’s shoulder. “It should have some stitches. I can clean it up as soon as we get back to the ship.” He reached around Kurt from the other side, and the three of them slowly walked back to the ship with the others in tow.

Kurt emerged from the infirmary later that day feeling not too much worse for the wear. His near brush with death had made his slashed shoulder feel unimportant, relatively speaking. He walked into the common area to find Finn and that blonde girl--Quinn--yelling at each other. Quinn was holding the bundled baby, and demanding money, while Finn was insisting that he didn’t owe her anything. The rest of the crew was sitting or standing around the edges of the room, just watching. Kurt watched Puck for a while to gauge his reaction to the situation, but he didn’t move.

Finally Kurt circled around to get next to him. “Puck, say something.”

“What should I say? It’s not my fight.”

Kurt glared at him. “I know, Puck.”

“Whaddya mean you know? What do you know?” Puck looked unconcerned.

“I heard you and Quinn talking yesterday. I know.”

Puck grunted. Then his eyes widened and he grunted again. “Oh.”

“Yeah, ‘oh.’ So you say something, or I will.”

“I ain’t--”

“Everyone!” Kurt said loudly, stepping into the center of the room. Quinn stopped talking mid-sentence and Finn’s jaw dropped open.

“I have something to say.”

“Kurt, no, this isn’t your problem. You’ve had enough today,” Finn said.

“It’s not your problem either, Finn,” Kurt snapped. “And you know that,” he nodded to Finn; “and you know that,” he nodded to Quinn; “and you know that,” he nodded to Puck.

“What are you saying?” Finn looked confused.

“Tell him, Puck,” Kurt demanded.

“It’s my kid,” Puck said with a shrug. “I mean, prob’ly. I dunno. But could be.”

Finn turned back to Quinn with incredulity, muttering under his breath. “ Tai-kong suo-yo duh shing-chiou sai-jin wuh duh pee-goo .”

“Explain yourself, woman,” Mercedes snapped.

Quinn looked from face to face around the room, then with a wail she clutched the child to her chest and ran out. Sam followed her and soon returned to report that she had left the ship.

“Puck, go follow her.” Kurt demanded.

“The hell I will.” Puck protested hotly. “She left, didn’t you see?”

“It’s your child and your responsibility. Find her and give her your take from our last contract.”

“The whole take? Da-shiang bao-tza shr duh lah doo-tze .”

Kurt glared at him. “I ain’t sayin’ you have to marry the woman but at least give her a chance to leave this place. We’ve all seen how this gorram planet treats those they don’t care for. I’m not having that on my conscience.”

Puck muttered a few more choice words, but he grabbed his hat and left the ship.

“Now,” Kurt said a little more brightly, as Blaine pressed beside him, “how much closer to death must a man get before someone fixes him some grub?”

Kurt and Finn were checking over all the crates in the hold, lashing them securely for take-off.  

“Kurt.” Finn pointed to a note stuck to the top of one of Mrs. Sylvester’s crates. Kurt opened it with trepidation.

Dear Captain Porcelain and the Brassy Hag,
I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone look so awkward as you two did when you kissed. It was one of the funniest things I’ve seen in a long time, and that’s valuable on a planet like this, so thank you. A word of advice: don’t try to pass as a couple because you’re terrible at it. Also, if you happen to go to Pandora, look up my cousin Badger. He’ll have business for you.
                Sue Sylvester

“Well, well, well,” Finn said behind him, and Kurt realized he must have been reading over his shoulder.

“What?”

“Everybody plays each other, Kurt. That’s all anybody ever does. That Quinn woman tried to play me. You played Sylvester and she played you right back.”

“I guess I’m lucky I’m funny?”

Finn chuckled. “I guess you are. C’mon, little brother, let’s get off this *ruanpan mian rock.”

Kurt smiled. He couldn’t wait to be away from this place. The cargo now secured, he made his way to Blaine’s shuttle, Finn’s words on his mind. He knew that he and Blaine had some things to talk about, but he knew they would. They always did. There were only three people in the ‘verse that Kurt trusted to not play him. Finn and Mercedes he had known for years; they had fought beside each other and he knew they would always have his back. His trust for Blaine was different, and newer, but no less intense. He trusted Blaine with his soul, and he knew that no matter what came up, they would figure it out.

Chapter Text

Brittany had been on spaceships before, but not like this. On her way to school she’d been on a big Alliance transport where everyone had little matching bunks in little matching rooms and there were numbers by all the doors so that everyone could find their way back to the correct room. That was interesting for the first two days, but then it was boring for the other 51 days because she’d already seen everything.

She’d been on a cargo ship where she and Mike had hidden as stowaways. That was boring for the whole time because she couldn’t go anywhere or explore anything. She was lucky to have had Mike with her because he made sure they had food and everything, but it was still boring.

But this ship was going to be different. It was small for one thing, and there weren’t very many people on it. She had a room of her own, next door to Mike but with her own door and her own bunk and flowers painted on the wall. A framed picture would have fallen down of course. But Mike didn’t have flowers in his room. Just her.

She liked having her own space. Her own safe space. She’d had her own room when she was a child, and again at the school that wasn’t really… then again that room may have been for her but it was hardly hers. No, she had been a prisoner there. Until she managed to get messages to Mike and he came and got her out.

She loved him for that.

He had always taken care of her. Well, now she could take care of him too. Maybe all she could do was make sure he ate enough and slept at night, but she was going to do that.

The ‘verse was a strange place. When Brittany was small she had speculated as much (a brain like hers was never still), but now that she lived on a spaceship she knew for sure. But it was strange in mostly wonderful ways. Take, for instance, Lord Tubbington.

“It’s got to be around here somewhere,” a male voice said somewhere outside her room. (That was Captain Finn. He was nice but he was sad.)

Brittany cooed at the little creature beside her in her bunk and pulled him closer. “You have to be quiet,” she whispered.

He hissed softly, clacking his teeth and cocking his head to the side to peer at her.

“They want to hurt you,” she explained. “But I promise I’ll keep you safe.”

“I’m telling you, she’s still got it,” another voice said. (That was Captain Kurt. He was nice but he was loud.)

“We checked her room and didn’t find nuthin,” a gruff voice said. (That was Puck. He was strong but he wasn’t nice.)

“She’s probably snuggling with it,” suggested a third voice. (That was Sam. He flew the ship. She didn’t know why he did it since a few adjustments would make it fly itself; but nobody had asked her so she didn’t mention it to anyone, and let them all keep doing it the hard way.)

“You all stay here. I’ll talk to her.” (That was Mike. Dear, sweet, Mike.)

He pushed open the door. She didn’t try to hide the little creature she was holding; she knew she couldn’t really hide anything from him.

“Brittany, you have to let us take him. It will be better for him here.”

“He’s mine. He came to me.”

“A spaceship is not a good home for Lord Tubbington. He needs to be able to run in the fresh air.”

Brittany stuck out her lip. She wanted to run in the fresh air too, but she was staying on the spaceship because it was safer. Because the Alliance wanted her; just like they wanted Lord Tubbington.

“No.”

Mike sighed and scratched his head, leaving his hand in his hair for a minute before dropping it to his hip. “Just come look at this refuge with me, ok? I think you’ll feel better about letting Lord Tubbington stay here if you see it.”

Brittany considered it carefully. It didn’t take long--she’d always been able to think through things quickly. With Lord Tubbington cradled carefully in her arms, she rose to her feet. “Ok. Let’s go.”

The ship was interesting to Brittany, but there were interesting people on the ship too.

One of the captains was lonely and sad. He didn’t tell anyone, but Brittany saw him sometimes, especially when she went for walks at night. He would sit and look at stars for hours. Sometimes he cried. Brittany cried sometimes when she watched him. She never told him though. She never told anyone, not even Mike.

The other captain wasn’t lonely; she thought he might have been the first few days but that had changed. He was best friends with the one who had dark curly hair and pretty clothes. They spent lots of time together when they thought no one was looking; but Brittany was always looking. Even when other people were around they were always looking at each other. When other people weren’t around they touched hands and hair and faces too.

One time the lonely captain had told the other captain that he knew about the pretty one. The other captain pretended he didn’t know about it, but the first captain tickled him until he admitted it was true. After that nobody pretended anymore. Other people on the ship shared beds so why not them? Even the man with the funny hair slept cuddled up to a big gun.

Brittany thought the tickling was funny. She had never seen anyone do that before. She decided to try it with Mike sometime when he wouldn’t tell her something.

Mike had been right. The GMO refuge was beautiful. Most of the animals there were the only one of their kind, and Brittany felt a kinship with them immediately. It was managed by a mother and daughter named Millie and Marley Rose. Marley didn’t hesitate a moment when she saw Lord Tubbington.

She reached out to stroke his head. No one else had ever done that so Brittany let her do it.

“Do you know what he eats?” Marley asked.

Brittany frowned. “He didn’t like canned peas, but nobody does.”

Marley laughed. “No, I suppose not. But I meant does he eat meat or not?”

“Oh, he ate everything. Except the peas. But I think he’d prefer to be carnivorous.”

Marley nodded. “So he will need to be in an area where there’s nobody else he’d try to eat, and from the look of him some good space for running...” She had pulled out a map of the facility and was looking over it. “Over here should be good. How many of these animals do you have?”

Over the next hour Brittany told Marley everything she knew about Lord Tubbington and his siblings, and Marley helped her get them all settled in an enclosure. Marley was good with animals; she couldn’t read them the way that Brittany did, but she seemed to understand their minds.

“Did you get everyone settled already?” Millie asked when they came back into the main building where Mike, Kurt, and Tina were waiting. “That was faster than I expected.”

“I think so,” Marley said. “Brittany here is remarkable with the creatures. I’m not sure how she does it but it’s like she knows what they are going to do before they do.”

“I just analyze their mass, motion potential, velocity, and trajectory, and calculate the physics of it,” Brittany explained. “It’s not that complicated.”

Millie and Marley stared at her. Apparently they thought it was complicated.

“And I have a lot of practice,” Brittany added.

“Well, whatever it is, it’s wonderful,” Millie said. “I don’t know what other plans you might have, but if you ever want to take up animal husbandry, there would be a place for you here.”

There were other people on the ship, and Brittany found them even more interesting than the ship itself. Things (like machines or animals or viruses) were interesting, but they were predictable. Brittany could watch for a while, or learn the parts, and then there was nothing left to watch because she knew what they could do.

But people: people never did what made sense. Not even Mike.

Mike had ruined his career--ruined his whole future--to save Brittany from the Alliance. He had told her that she was the most important person in his ‘verse.

Then he met the mechanic, Tina.

She was the first person they had met, and Mike started spending time with her right from the start. She was nice, but she laughed at Mike’s jokes even when they were dumb. She danced with him in the engine room, and told him stories about her adventures.

Brittany didn’t hate Tina; but she missed the way things used to be. It was hard to adjust to this new way. Brittany also worried worried about how much Tina distracted Mike. It was like they didn’t notice anything else, and for someone who had lived the life that Brittany had, that didn’t seem safe or smart.

They weren’t like the pilot and the first mate. Sam and Mercedes were married and they called each other things like “dear” and “sweetums,” and sometimes they looked at each other and giggled, but mostly they just did their jobs. Brittany liked that. She liked them.

Also, Sam had toy dinosaurs in the cockpit, and sometimes he let Brittany play with them with him. She liked that too. So did Lord Tubbington.

Brittany didn’t stay at the refuge, although she had thought about it.

Actually she still thought about it. There wasn’t really a place for her on the ship. Everyone had their someone (or something), and Brittany was extraneous. Before she’d always had Mike, but now he had Tina, and it wasn’t the same. Brittany didn’t feel needed. Sometimes she didn’t feel wanted.

Sooner or later Bounty was going to head to that part of the ‘verse again. Maybe Brittany should ask Captain Finn if he would take her back there. Or Sam. Sam would understand. She knew she’d have to tell Mike about it, but she wasn’t sure how, so she put it off. It didn’t matter yet. She’d tell him later.

Before Lord Tubbington they had sailed a lot, and after Lord Tubbington they kept on sailing. Most of the days ran together in a stream of monotony; but some days they stopped on planets. Like today.

This planet, Ariel, had a lot of people everywhere; and buildings and ships. Brittany could see them through the windows.

“You stay here with Tina and Blaine,” Mike instructed her as he pulled on his belt and boots.

Brittany shrugged. “Sure.” She never got to go off the ship on this kind of planet. She understood well enough that the Alliance was strong in places like this, and that she was a fugitive. Still, that didn’t really justify why Mike was allowed to get off. He was a fugitive too.

“I have to go help with this job,” Mike said, as if he’d read her mind. He couldn’t read minds--she knew that because nobody could read minds--but her brother had always been attentive to her. “We’re, uh, liberating some medicines and supplies from the hospital here, and I’m the only one who knows which ones to take.”

Brittany tossed her hair with a shake of her head. “Whatever.” Left behind. Again. But she was used to it. Tina was nice, and Blaine smelled good, so it would probably be nicer to stay on the ship anyway. She decided to go look for them.

Blaine was in his shuttle, but the door was open, so Brittany let herself in. As luck would have it, Tina was in there with him, listening as he played some stringy instrument and sang. Brittany sat on a pillow and listened. The pillow was soft-fuzzy but it had a button in the middle that wasn’t soft. Brittany sat on it anyway, and listened to Blaine’s music.

“We need to make a quick exit!” Finn hollered as he, Kurt, Mercedes, Sam and Mike burst into the ship a few hours later. Apparently their mission to liberate things hadn’t gone as smoothly as they’d anticipated. In fact it reminded Brittany of her first minutes aboard Bounty when Tina had hustled them off to their rooms and told them to wait there.

Sam was doubled over, with Finn and Mike on either side of him helping him along.

“What happened?” Blaine asked as Tina efficiently closed and bolted the door behind them.

“He took a bullet,” Mike explained quickly. “It doesn’t look too serious but I’ve got to stitch the wound before he loses any more blood.”

“The butterflies had marshmallows!” Sam announced loudly.

“Also he’s apparently lost his mind from the pain,” Mercedes added wryly. She took her husband’s arm away from Finn and pulled it over her own shoulder. “You’ve got to get us out of here, Finn.”

Finn froze. “I can’t take off, not with half the Alliance on our tails. I can barely take off when there’s no one on our tail.”

“You don’t have much choice, Finn,” Kurt said sharply. “You’re the only other one here who knows anything about flying. This may have been an oversight in our initial planning, but it can’t be helped.”

Finn looked terrified. So did Kurt, actually. Brittany licked her lips.

“I can fly her, sir.”

Everyone in the room turned to her at once.

“You know how to fly?” Finn asked.

“It’s just a ship, sir,” she explained. Why was this always hard for people to understand. “I’ve looked at the parts. I understand how it works, so I can fly it.”

“Are you sure?” Kurt looked at Mike and then back at Brittany.

“Whatever she does, it’s going to be better than what I could do,” Finn admitted. “We’ve seen her cage cottonheads and tame dinosaurs; why not let her try?”

“Well we’re in trouble if she fails, but I guess we’re in trouble if she doesn’t try too, so we might as well.” Kurt gave her a nod of approval. “Go for it Britt. Show us what you can do.”

So she did. She tried sitting in the pilot’s chair like Sam always did, but it didn’t feel right. So she took off her shoes and stood with her bare feet on the floor where she could feel the hum of the engine. Tina was good at that--keeping the engine purring. Brittany closed her eyes and reached to the console. She felt the levers and switches and slowly her hands began to dance across them.

She didn’t know how long it was; it felt eternal and instant at once. Brittany just listened to the ship, and watched out the window. Kurt watched the scanner and told her when ships were near and which way they were, and Brittany told Bounty where to go, and Bounty went. Over, under, around, and between the pursuers as they ascended. Fewer followed as they cleared Ariel’s atmosphere, and the last was lost as they entered orbit.

“Brittany, you just saved us,” Finn said reverently. “None of the rest of us could have done that. Thank you.” He held out his arms awkwardly, and Brittany didn’t hesitate to jump in for a hug.

“Can you handle it now that we’re in autopilot territory?”

Finn grinned. “Yeah, I can do it now. Why don’t you run down to the infirmary and ask your brother how Sam is doing.

So run she did. To the infirmary where she found a stitched-up Sam telling jokes to Mike and Mercedes. To the engine room where she danced happily with Tina and sang songs about their love for Bounty . To the common room where Puck was pacing anxiously, but stopped when she planted a kiss on his cheek. To Blaine’s shuttle where he was sitting cross-legged on the floor, breathing deeply in quiet meditation. He opened his eyes and met her gaze, nodded slightly and smiled.

Sometimes she felt like all they ever did was run; but they were free and that was what mattered. Bounty might not be much more than a bucket sailing through the sky, but it was home.