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heliads · 1 year ago

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everything is blue • conrisa space au • Chapter Eight: Time Must Pass

Risa Ward escaped a shuttle destined for her certain, painful death. Connor Lassiter ran away from home before it was too late. Lev Calder was kidnapped. All of them were supposed to be dissected for parts, used to advance a declining galaxy, but as of right now, all of them are whole. Life will not stay the same way forever.

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Risa Ward planned on living in the Graveyard as long as she could, but that doesn’t make it any more enjoyable. It’s been what, more than half a standard year by now, if not getting close to a full turn by Centerworld standards, and the days keep stretching out, one by one into hundreds. This is what survival is really like, not one grand and glorious battle but a slow thing, hiding in back corners and watching the time pass as a mute observer. Risa knows this, but it doesn’t make the tedium of it all any easier to stomach.

She tries to be a good sport about it all, though. She won over the other kids working in the med wing by sheer utility. After their shifts let out, they’ll often sit around talking about their old lives. Risa stays quiet most of the time, listening to the others discuss school trips or offworld voyages.

The State Home back on OH-10 didn’t have the budget for any unnecessary expenditures, obviously, so she doesn’t have much to tell them, but it’s still interesting to listen to their stories and imagine what it might have been like to grow up in that way. If her parents hadn’t given her up, if Risa hadn’t gotten a bad draw in the luck of life and actually had a childhood where people wanted her as more than just a sum of parts, maybe she too could have stories to tell about growing up with friends and family who liked having her around.

None of these kids had that, though, not really. In the end, despite their new toys at birthdays, stellar report cards, and everlasting athletic victories, they were all discarded and sentenced to distribution. Nothing off of their highlight reel was ever enough to save them.

In the end, that’s Risa’s saving grace. Maybe she didn’t have a heavenly upbringing, but when people talk about her, they won’t just mention her childhood. The stories will come from what she still has yet to do. Risa doesn’t know where she’s going, if she’ll even make it to eighteen or find a fulfilling career after that, but in the many months since she escaped the StaHo shuttle that should have taken her to a distribution colony, she’s learned that she’s made of far tougher stuff than anyone envisioned, even herself. Risa is a survivor. She can do incredible things when she sets her mind to it.

Until that happy day when she can finally say goodbye to the Graveyard for good, Risa’s only choice is to throw herself into this life before she trades it off for a better one. She’s promoted to head of the medical workers, and utilizes her position effectively to organize the straggling ranks into a well-oiled machine. These kids need her, and she’ll be damned if she’s going to let them down now.

Besides, Risa’s not doing this alone. In addition to the med wing kids, she’s been introduced to the groundsless in the ComBom, and, of course, she’s still got Connor. Although Risa would certainly never admit it to his face, she was secretly afraid that he’d get tired of her after meeting so many other kids in the Graveyard. There are plenty of girls here willing to throw themselves at his feet, but for some reason, Connor has never paid attention to any of them. Risa has witnessed many girls batting their lashes at him, but the second Risa walks into the room, Connor abandons them to be at her side.

It certainly helps her ego, to say the least. Every time it happens, Risa can’t help a bright spark of something from lighting up her spine, making the back of her neck prickle with heat. She’d be lying if she said she didn’t enjoy every jealous look, every pining stare. Connor’s hers. The others can try to intervene every chance they get, but it doesn’t matter. Connor picked her. Risa might not entirely understand why, other than the sheer necessity of having flown a stolen ship together, but she’s quite glad for it.

Truth be told, Risa can’t really explain why she’s chosen Connor so many times either. She does know him better than the others, but only by a few days. She sees the kids from the med wing more often, certainly, but when it’s been a long day and she only wants the sweet relief of having to do nothing at all until lights out, Risa thinks about him and him alone.

There’s a reason for that, of course, but Risa won’t admit it, not even to herself. Now is not the place nor the time. They’re stuck in a rotting cruiser by fate, but even this rusting prison won’t hold them forever. At some point, they’ll both age out of the Graveyard, and then there’s no guarantee that they’ll ever see each other again after that.

It’s best not to think about it, then. Still, when Connor grabs her hand to catch up to her after she gets out of medical duties, when their shoulders brush together as they walk down the hallway, Risa can’t help but think about it. Sometimes, she thinks he must have to think about it too. There’s no way that he doesn’t feel a thing when Risa feels as if she might burn alive from the inside out from the sheer force of trying to hide it.

There was, of course, the one day they came the closest to saying something. Connor had insisted on leading Risa away from the crowds of other distributes. He said he’d found a secret spot while fixing things up that day and he just had to show her. Risa had glimmered with the proud knowledge that she was the first and only person he thought to show, and let him tug her down a few corridors and deep into the twisting web of Graveyard rooms and backrooms.

Connor’s secret place ended up being one of the dozens of storage closets littering the Graveyard. He’d laughed at her disappointed expression when they first stopped in front of it, and asked her for a little faith, Risa, please, after all this time, and carefully unlocked the door. The room was bigger inside than she’d expected, and twisted down into shadowy corners that went so deep she would never find the end just by looking. It had been dark inside, too dark to see, and she’d relied on the firm lock of his hand around hers to know the way.

Risa had thought that she might go on that way forever, stumbling blindly through the shadows with only Connor to guide her. She’s still not good in the shapeless dark, even months after leaving Cleaver’s ship behind, and as they went further inside and it felt as if they might never see light again, Risa’s breath had started to catch in her throat involuntarily.

He must have been listening to her somehow, keeping track of her even in that shifting blackness, because his grip had tightened a little, two of his forefingers straightening to tap twice against her skin. A physical heartbeat, just like when the two of them were back in that never ending night. Despite the pounding of her heart, Risa had felt herself start to relax, the pattern of her breathing starting to even out again.

At last, they’d come to a stop in front of a tall panel of glass facing the outside of the ship. Risa couldn’t fathom why someone had put a window here of all places; maybe it had made more sense in the Graveyard’s past life as a military cruiser, before it had been stolen away from the shipyards and used to hold hundreds of dead children walking. Still, it’s one of the larger ones on the ship, and it hasn’t yet been covered up by decades of cracks or scuffs, making the view even more pristine than usual, and better yet, a secret known only to the two of them. No wonder he liked it so much.

Connor had steered her in front of him so she could get a look. She’d craned her head up to look at his expression first before fully committing to the cosmos outside, so she would know how to properly react. An entire galaxy of stars in front of her, and Risa wanted only to look at Connor. If she didn’t know before, she knew then, the secret she would never tell him until they took away her very lungs. Even with her heart in someone else’s chest, it would still beat for him.

Connor’s expression was soft for once, untouched by the stress of staying alive that has furrowed his brow for as long as she’s known him. His eyes were wide, the light of a thousand stars reflected against the pupils. It’s a view he must see every day, but it still has the capability of rendering him awestruck every time he’s confronted by it. His mouth slackened slightly as he took it all in, and Risa mentally traced the bow of his lips as his expression shifts into one of peace.

He’d looked down at her then, catching her in the act, and grinned. “What do you think? Good, huh?”

“Yeah,” Risa had managed, her head tucked against his collarbone, “Really good.”

Connor had grinned proudly, as if he had single handedly been responsible for dragging each and every constellation here for her to witness. “I know. You’re not paying attention, though.”

She’d laughed at that, finally turning her eyes to the unfolding night sky with no small amount of reluctance. It was a wonderful sight, really, the inky spill of it. Somewhere before her were dozens of star systems, hundreds of planets. In the milky droplets of the galaxy, other ferals were staring back at her. Maybe they know they’re going to die soon, maybe they haven’t figured it out yet. They’ll have time to come to that conclusion, though. We all have time.

Connor’s hands were still loosely on Risa’s hips from where he’d guided her to the window; she wasn’t sure if he remembered they were still there or not, but she couldn’t forget it if she tried. Risa has never associated touch with a good thing before; a punch is skin against skin, but in a terrible way, and pressing cloth to someone’s face to stop it from bleeding is not a sensation she cherishes. This was different, though. This was Connor, and he has always been different. This was a feeling she wanted to chase forever.

It had ended, of course. All moments do. No matter how she stood there, pressed against him in that billowing darkness, wishing upon every star she saw that they could be like that and never leave, they did. Good things come to a close much faster than torment. Risa had fallen asleep that night dreaming of his hands on hers, gently guiding her through the darkness towards panels of infinite light, and for once woken up the next morning to find herself wholly rested.

She had waited for Connor to say something about that day, but any explanations of just why they had spent so long alone together were seemingly unimportant on his end. Risa didn’t dare bring it up for fear of revealing herself for feeling too much, but she thinks about it often, and hopes that he does, too.

Connor has enough to worry about, though. He’s off-put by Roland (who isn’t) and Starkey (again, who wouldn’t be), so if he sees Risa as a dependable constant, who is she to mess with that? He’s been burning the candle at both ends as of late; the ship is having even more troubles than usual, apparently, and of course it’s up to Connor to fix it. Never mind the fact that cruisers like the Graveyard have an expiration date even when they’re just being used to house several hundred groundsless, never mind that asking a handful of teenagers to keep a behemoth like this spaceborne is completely insane, Connor has been assigned a job to do and he’d rather die than let them all down. He’s fiercely protective, her boy. Risa has come to appreciate that about him.

Still, Connor makes time for her and for himself. He hangs out in the ComBom more often, and Risa likes to join him when she can. There’s something about Hayden that makes their smiles come easier. Although some selfish part of Risa will always wish she was the sole one making Connor laugh, she’s grateful to the blond comms master for being able to carry on the task.

They’re all together now, actually, the three of them plus Jeevan and a few other comms kids completing their daily tasks in the background. Technically, Risa doesn’t think she or Connor are supposed to be in there with all the tech just lying around, but Hayden’s not a snitch, and they all have a better time joking around together than trying to force their way through work shifts anyway, so no one ever complains.

Well, not about them. Hayden complains plenty, mainly about the terrible inconvenience that he wasn’t born into the body of an established deity on a resource-lush planet or at least put on this earth with naturally straight teeth so he wouldn’t have to go to the trouble of straightening them just to die. He does it all with a natural charm that leaves Risa laughing more than she ever plans to. There is no disliking Hayden. It’s simply inhuman not to get along well with him, which is a good trait for someone to have when they’re in charge of the cruiser’s connections to the galaxy around them.

So no, Risa doesn’t mind Connor meeting up with her after their shifts end just to head over to Hayden’s little hideaway. Risa swears Hayden both starts working earlier and finishes much later than any of them, but he also gets to sit down all day, so maybe there’s a reason for his extended shifts. Honestly, the long hours might be enforced by Hayden and Hayden alone. The kid’s practically glued to his radio channels and beeping readouts. He’ll probably avoid distribution by accidentally burning the shifting lines into his retinas from staring at them too long, if it wasn’t his plan already.

Hayden’s squinting at a computer readout when they arrive. The tech in the ComBom is incredibly outdated, as Hayden has groused about at length; physical screens instead of holographic readouts, clunky buttons that aren’t even fingerprint locked, and so forth. Hence the old-fashioned 3D monitor in front of Hayden.

“Sorry,” Hayden mutters absentmindedly as he clicks around, “Forgot you two were swinging by. Lost track of time, I was having so much fun.”

Risa slides into one of the available chairs, Connor doing the same by her side. “What sort of fun, if you don’t mind me asking?” She queries.

She probably should know this by now, but a concise explanation of just what Hayden and the rest of the groundless of the ComBom do on a daily basis has eluded her for months now. She’s probably a bad friend for forgetting, but there’s only room in her head for so much, and Risa finds it more useful to remember how to set a bone than the results of random button-mashing up here.

Hayden, thankfully, doesn’t point this out. He’s got a sort of quiet tact that Risa has come to appreciate. He has a knack for sensing when certain topics are off-limits or what bad habits shouldn’t be a source of teasing. Although he’ll loudly proclaim to anyone around that he’s one hundred percent incorrigible, as evidenced by the removal of his grounds license, Hayden’s still very careful when he wants to be.

“I’m monitoring radio waves,” Hayden says, leaning back in his chair so she and Connor can get a better look, “All sorts of stuff is sent out in space. Most passengers have no idea that we can pick up their comms channels even lightyears away from where they were sent. The signals just keep bouncing off of stars, and we can collect them sooner or later.”

Risa nods. “What are you listening to now? Classic pop hits of the 3000s?”

Hayden pulls a face. “That would liven things up around here, certainly. I know Jeevan would love it if I started breaking out into song.”

Across the room, Jeevan lets out a trademark exasperated groan. “I hear enough of your singing thanks to your little radio show. I know you insisted on picking a theme song to end your broadcasts, but just because it’s stuck in your head doesn’t mean you have to hum it until it’s stuck in ours, too.”

“What’s yours is mine,” Hayden says affectionately. “Hey, maybe I’ll get distributed and you can permanently have what’s stuck in my head. Every time that song plays in your mind, you can always blame it on my faulty cerebral tissue. Consider it a parting gift from me to you.”

“Just as pleasant as always, Hayden,” Connor chides, but he’s grinning. Risa too. Usually, she doesn’t find distribution jokes all that funny, but among the aptly nicknamed Deadmen, gallows humor is kind of the way to go.

“Besides, my radio broadcasts are nothing to bat an eye at,” Hayden carries on. “I get a dependable four listeners every time, and I’m certain that no more than half of them are Juvey-cops trying to find my location. They’re absolutely mad for my music taste, of that you can be certain.”

Risa’s eyes widen. “You’ve got Juvey-cops listening to your show? Hayden, what if they track us?”

The last thing they need is someone tracing Hayden’s broadcast, but the blond doesn’t seem that concerned. “They’ve got no chance of it. We’ve whipped up the best signal mufflers this side of the galaxy can offer. Trust me, if they could hack it, they would have found us months ago, but they can’t get through. All they can do is hang onto my every word in the hopes that I’ll give something away, but I’d never kiss and tell about the Graveyard.”

Connor doesn’t seem convinced. “So if you can’t give any location information because the Juveys are listening, then what’s the point? Are there groundsless across the galaxy who just can’t get enough of your motivational speaking?”

Hayden points a finger at him. “Obviously yes, but there’s more to Radio Free Hayden than just my overwhelming charm. The radio show provides ways to stay alive. Clues. I have a remote beacon they can signal if they need to be picked up, that’s how we’ve found a lot of rogue distributes recently. We see them, but they can’t see us. And more than that, it gives them hope. The Collective makes it seem like there’s nothing out there. I make sure that no one believes that.”

Despite Hayden’s normally cavalier attitude, a fervent light begins to shine in his eyes as he says it. He truly believes that his show can do some good, and even though they’d all been making fun of him earlier, it’s hard not to lean in and want to hear more.

“What kind of hope?” Risa asks. Her voice drops closer to an awed whisper than she’d really meant, but it seemed to suit the mood.

Hayden grins, entranced by the sheer idea of it. “It means there’s someone else out there than just the Collective. They can’t stand the thought of it. They went out of their way to shut down resistance, but they can’t stamp out every pocket of it.”

Hayden’s voice takes on a darker tone. “Suns know they tried, though. All of humanity came from just one planet, and now we’re on all of them. Something happened to eliminate whatever came before us, but they went too far.”

Risa shudders. This is something that’s plagued her before. How do you get rid of hundreds of civilizations across the galaxy? Some of the worlds the old-Earth explorers discovered were uninhabited, yes, but not all of them. The Collective killed off their opposition, but they didn’t just kill the inhabitants. They killed everything.

There are no living things left in the galaxy, not anymore. All that’s left are replicants, synth-plants and lab-grown animals. You can blame the mass extinction on anything you like, but in the end, the truth is this: we choked out life itself because we were so desperate to grow that we forgot to leave space for everything else. Every flora must be grown by hand. Every fauna must be cloned. It’s an exhaustive cycle, and extraordinarily inefficient. Hence the need to strip ferals of their parts so any leftover bit of living matter can be injected back into the dying galaxy.

Hayden’s gaze has gone cold. “It’s not just the Collective we’re fighting, though. One government can’t hold back the population of the entire galaxy forever. Luckily for them, they’re backed by the richest people in all the worlds, and they had to go make the Proactive Citizenry.”

Connor’s expression flickers over with distrust. “I hate those guys. They used to send representatives out to my system every now and then to warn us against misbehaving. It happened like once a year or something, they’d leer at us about how our eyes would end up in someone else’s sockets if we didn’t keep our grades up.”

Risa nods in assent. The Proactive Citizenry may have started out as a small grassroots organization, but it’s become severely inflated over time, bloated with the weight of its own moral superiority. Turns out, all it takes are a hundred or so extremely powerful donors, and you can do just about anything. Distribution might have disappeared on its own within a few decades of its creation, but the PC made sure that would never happen. Whenever distribution rates start to plummet, the PC steps in with several large donations, spreading their message far and wide across the galaxy. All it took was one man, one Dorian Heartland, to start it up around the same time humanity started exploring space centuries ago, and his gory machine has kept them all in check ever since.

Risa can never be sure why in sunfire they feel the need to do it. All the big donors in the Proactive Citizenry are well above the age of distribution, obviously, so they’ll only benefit from having new skin and organs to pass around, but certainly some of them should have gained a conscience after all this time. Instead, they pass on their ideals from generation to generation, and the wheels of lost flesh keep turning.

They’ve fine-tuned their message over the years, turning the public focus away from the kids losing their lives to the galaxy who needs all the help it can get. That’s how the PC makes money, supposedly, by turning raw distributed matter into life again. Recycling. Rejuvenation. A redistribution of creation into the ecosystems that need it.

Despite the moral overtones, it’s impossible to ignore that their grand society is built on blood. Risa, for one, does not intend to forget it anytime soon. However, she’s only one girl without even a grounds license to stand on. How can anyone fight the richest people in the galaxy? How can anyone take on a system like that and walk away with the victory?

Hayden must be thinking the same thing, because he lets out a harsh sigh before continuing on. “That’s what I’m trying to do, at least. If someone can stand up against the PC, maybe it’ll have to be me. I’m the only one with the means of contacting anyone outside of this cruiser, anyway.”

Connor nods, half in his own world. “The Admiral knows about your little talk show?”

Hayden pulls a face that makes it quite clear what he thinks about the Admiral, but agrees. “Yeah, he knows. I may like the sound of my own voice more than my handful of listeners, but I wanted to make sure it was actually safe. Even so, he was pretty harsh about it. All of the comms systems have to be locked down every night, and no one except the ComBom workers are allowed inside here. Except for you two, of course, but I make an exception for my fans. It’s just not worth the risk of anyone else getting their hands on this stuff.”

Risa shudders. “It’s dangerous, is what it is. All it takes is one kid wandering in here and we could send out a signal the PC could pick up in no time. Then we’d have an entire army of Juvey-cops on our tail, and stars know the Graveyard is in no condition to fight or fly.”

A shuffling sound outside the door makes all three of them startle. The door’s half open– environmental controls have been shoddy as of late, despite Connor and the other engineers working to fix the issue, so anything to encourage air flow is a must– and although she can’t see anything in the glimpse of the corridor outside, Risa swears she heard something.

Jeevan grimaces, temporarily glancing up from his work to aim a glare at the door. “Gotta be a runner. Man, those starspawn piss me off. Always strutting around like they’re so important just because their jobs let them hear everyone’s gossip.”

Hayden chuckles. “You’re just bitter because one of them caught you admiring your reflection in one of the polished viewports and told half the ship. Anyway, Risa, I wouldn’t worry about the odds of our discovery much more than usual. Like I said, I’ve been doing this a while, and nothing has happened.”

“Nothing has happened yet,” Connor clarifies.

Risa leans back in her chair, lost in thought. She’s always known that their situation in the Graveyard was precarious– put a couple hundred runaway distributes anywhere and you’re going to have people looking for you, obviously, but this puts things in an entirely different light. Hayden made it seem like the Juveys are actively listening in, just waiting for one of them to slip up and send out a tracer they can’t pull back. It’s easy to forget that the rest of the world exists when she only ever sees her friends on one behemoth of a star cruiser, but the galaxy isn’t as inclined to return the favor. All it takes is one mistake, and they’re all gone. All of this work, running and hiding and fighting, and it would be for nothing.

Connor senses her paranoia, and casually drapes his right hand over the arm of his chair so he can tap twice against her left forearm. It calms her down immediately, like she’s some kind of sleeper soldier who can only be activated by him. Hayden watches this happen with a faintly bemused expression, but says nothing.

“No one’s finding us, Risa,” Connor says. “How could they?”

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heliads · 1 year ago

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everything is blue • conrisa space au • Chapter Fourteen: Dancing in the Moonlight

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Risa isn’t sure how long this is going to last, but stars, she hopes this sort of feeling sticks around forever. She hasn’t been happy like this– effortlessly, unchangingly happy– in a very long time. Risa was happy in the Graveyard, of course, they all were; they were groundsless who weren’t dead yet, who wouldn’t be? There was always a slim undercurrent of fear running through every one of their conversations, though, the knowledge that even the brightest moments could be swiftly brought down by their eventual discovery.

Now that trap has been sprung, yet Risa still managed to make it out alive. She’s still with Connor despite no longer being in that safe haven. They might be flying straight towards their deaths, but for right now, they are together, together and happy. The little victories are worth twice the big ones, Risa has learned that since she ran away. This one feels like it might be worth her whole life.

That, perhaps, is why she’s okay with the fate that awaits her on the distribution colony. Risa doesn’t want to die, obviously, and she will be fighting tooth and nail to keep herself intact even while she’s breaking her friends out of the colony, but she can take this risk because she trusts Connor with her life. Before this, Risa would have stayed on the ship and never meddled with a danger like this. If she’s got Connor, though, Risa can do anything. Even beat the odds by dragging a small army of Deadmen out of their looming distributions.

Risa never thought of herself as a hero. No one is, not here, not in these worlds. When she was escaping the StaHo shuttle that should have taken her to a similar harvest colony, Risa didn’t stop to usher any of the other kids out. When she and Connor were running through the collapsing corridors of the conquered Graveyard, they didn’t help any distributes they saw. In a survival setting, you have to put yourself first.

Now, though, they finally have the chance to do something good, something that won’t just directly benefit them. There is, of course, the looming threat that the runaways Connor ran into could cancel his fake grounds license, but both of them know that’s not the real reason they’re doing this. Over the course of that year spent in the Graveyard, they made friends, true friends. They can’t simply abandon those friends to their fates just because she and Connor have already gotten themselves out of trouble.

Thus, they’re shipping out to a distribution colony to spare as many kids as they can from dissection. It took a little while to find out the right place to go– the amount of distribution colonies in the galaxy is sickeningly high, even higher than Risa was expecting– but eventually they stumbled across a few mentions of a sudden mass influx of distributes into a particular colony not far from the Graveyard and they knew they had their target.

Now all that’s left to do is to pass the time until they get there at last. Stars, she can’t imagine what it’s going to be like when they touch down. The guards will see some nice ship on their scanners and assume it’s, like, a Centerworld official or something come to see the progress of that particular harvest colony’s child dismemberment systems. They’ll all file up to receive their guests and then two teenagers will file out, an escaped StaHo ward and the Akron AWOL.

Talk about a surprise. Nothing about this arrival will be good by Centerworld standards. Imagine for a moment that you work for a harvest colony, that you’ve already thrown away enough of your morals to work for a harvest colony, and one day you get visitors. Two visitors exactly, two visitors that are, in fact, Deadmen, and their ship– their ship, it’s called the Unwind.

Suns, Risa had to practically force that little bit of information out of Connor. He’d been hesitating to tell her the name of the ship like he’s been hesitating to tell her literally everything else, probably out of fear of her judgment. And why shouldn’t she judge? Unwinding is the derogatory term for distribution. Only Unwinds ever use it, because why waste breath on the proper way to call a process designed to end your life in the most horrific way possible? Connor naming his ship, the guardian angel of those fleeing distribution everywhere, after a revolting slang term only used by the damned– Risa can admit it’s something. Stupid or brave, she’s not sure yet. But it’s something.

Risa is wandering around the ship as she is prone to do, taking in every corner and crevice lest she forget what it was like to briefly rule every square inch around her. She’ll miss this later, maybe, having all the open area to herself, knowing that the only other souls aboard were her and Connor, or maybe what she’ll long for most of all was still being alive and knowing the heart beating in her chest was her own.

Regardless, Risa is happy for it. The closer she meanders towards the nav center, the more aware she becomes of a distant sound. It starts off quiet, gradually growing louder as she creeps closer. It’s a gentle rhythm, an occasional melody. The pianist in her simply has to investigate. Eventually, she pokes her head through the door of the nav room to discover Connor messing around with one of the many instrument panels. Each time he presses a button or directs one of the many holodecks in front of him, speakers embedded somewhere in the floors and ceiling change their tune from happy to sad to anything that Connor’s heart desires.

He looks up when he sees her, grinning with excitement. “Did you know they’ve got music in this thing? Tons of songs, old and new. Crazy.”

Risa lets out a slow, disbelieving laugh. Although it sounds insane, she genuinely cannot remember the last time she listened to something like music. Every now and then, Hayden was able to intercept a signal or two with radio frequencies bearing songs, but they were always a little too glitchy or staticky to fully enjoy. They pretended otherwise, of course, anything can pass for greatness in the Graveyard, but they all knew it wasn’t quite the best. What Connor’s playing is perfectly crisp, though, every beat on time, every note in tune. As a musician, albeit a former one, it makes Risa’s heart soar.

“What songs do they have?” She asks, drawing closer so she can check it out.

“Anything,” Connor says, “Come on, let’s pick one.”

They scroll through aimlessly, playing a few seconds of this track or that so they can giggle at the absurd melodies. Rich people have terrible taste. At last, Connor gasps in delight and points at one song title in particular.

“What’s that one? No, it can’t be– Dancing in the Moonlight?”

Risa cocks her head curiously at him. “Do you know it? It looks old.”

“It’s super old,” he says, smiling fondly at some memory or inner thought, “It reminds me of one of my old teachers in school, though. She used to play it on the days I didn’t skip class. Or maybe she played it all of the days, I just didn’t know it because I skipped.”

Risa laughs at that. “Come on, then. Play it. We’ll see if it’s good enough to stay in school.”

Connor rolls his eyes, but he does as told and queues the song. A few seconds later, it starts to play, billowing around them in clear, rolling measures. She taps her foot a little, trying to sense the beat. Connor grins at her, stepping side to side in exaggerated motions.

Risa grins. “Just as good as you remember?”

“Even better,” Connor tells her. “Come on, dance with me.”

They start to move side by side together. Risa spins a little, just because she can. When she turns back around, Connor is beaming ear to ear. On a whim, she grabs Connor’s left hand with her right, placing his other hand on the small of her back. Two teenagers, swaying together to an upbeat song. It’s been done a million times before all across the galaxy but it still feels like such a startling and sweet surprise for each new couple. Every pair of young souls feels as if they’ve come up with something extraordinary. And, for them, it is.

“Are we waltzing?” Connor asks, wiggling his eyebrows a little to be annoying.

“We are,” Risa decides. “Come on, it’s easy. Box step. Step forward, then to the side, then back again. Simple.”

“Simple,” Connor agrees. She expects to have to lead him a little more, but his steps are easy and assured, and Risa realizes a little too late–

“You know how to do this, don’t you?” She asks.

“A little,” he admits, but he keeps dancing with her anyway. “My parents used to dance like that. I learned along by watching them. Figured it might come in handy sometime. You know, for picking up girls like I do all the time,” he says, flashing Risa an obvious, terrible wink. She laughs anyway and lets him spin her.

This time, when she comes back from the twirl, he’s a little too strong and she ends up closer to him than expected. To catch herself, Risa presses a hand against his chest, but she forgets to pull it away again. She can feel his heartbeat through his shirt and skin. They stop moving, just breathing together there, in and out. Risa is certain that he must sense the way her pulse is pounding.

“Risa,” he whispers.

She doesn’t pull away. His hand slackens from the small of her back, moving slowly to her waist. He isn’t pushing her away, but he’s giving her an opportunity to leave, if she wants it. Risa doesn’t want it. She only wants him.

She looks up at him. Connor’s eyes are half-lidded, and meet hers as if on the other side of an unfathomable distance. Risa doesn’t think she could say half what she wants to right now, doesn’t even know if she could fully think it, so all she can do is look back at him and hope he understands.

Connor has always understood.

Even now. Even when it’s the one boundary they have yet to cross.

He crosses it. She meets him halfway.

The kiss is a long time coming, Risa thinks. It’s the product of more than a year of endless pining and secrets kept for the benefit of a friendship both of them were scared to lose. However, it turns out there’s something far more valuable than a perpetual friendship, and that is the love that both of them have been hiding behind half-closed doors for almost as long as they’ve known each other. Risa doesn’t know how long Connor has been holding back, but it must have been almost as long as her.

Connor pulls back slightly, tilting his head down so the crown of his head touches her forehead. “Y’know,” he says absentmindedly, “You could have told me you liked me any time back in the Graveyard. You didn’t have to wait until we were about to storm a harvest colony to let me know.”

Risa laughs quietly. “You could have told me, too. Besides, I thought you liked it when I had a flair for drama.”

“I do,” Connor smiles, and kisses her again to prove it. It is just as exhilarating and earth-shattering as the first time. Risa wonders if each and every kiss will sweep her off her feet like this, and immediately wants to test that theory again and again, just to make sure.

Just as Risa begins to think that she might want this forever, an alarm goes off, the piercing klaxon rattling off of the fine walls of the spacecraft. She flinches against Connor’s lips, and he draws back at once.

“That’s the alarm I set to warn me when we were within an hour’s distance of the colony,” he whispers in a daze. His lips are swollen from the kiss, his pupils shot, but the look on his face is nothing short of horror, no sweetness of new love there. “We’re close. It’s coming up on us now.”

Risa draws in a sharp breath. “I thought we had more time.”

Connor looks at her, and the expression on his face is nothing short of heartbreaking. “So did I.”

Is that not what they have always wanted, time? Just when they finally find each other again, when they finally manage to confess the truth that’s been weighing on both of them all of this time, they are interrupted. Risa has no idea if they will survive this. She can hope, of course, but hope is a feeble thing to rest one’s strength on. Hope will always disappear when you need it the most. Hope is no excuse for reality.

Slowly, they make their way to the cockpit. Along the way, they make final preparations to hold a host of newly free distributes. Risa doesn’t ask him if he thinks they’ll survive this, and Connor pretends as if they will. When the colony comes into view, Risa almost doesn’t want to look. She realizes belatedly that this might be one of her last sights, though, so she forces her eyes open again, and what she sees is empty, unearthly stillness.

She tilts her head to the side, considering it. “I don’t see a whole lot of movement on the surface.”

Connor frowns. “Well, maybe they’re keeping all of the kids inside? I mean, they’re probably not letting them run around all the time. Wouldn’t want one of their prisoners to accidentally break a leg or something and ruin their profits.”

His tone is bitter. Risa can’t help but match it. “I don’t even see lights. Surely they want them to be healthy, right? They wouldn’t keep them in total darkness.”

Connor leans forward to get a better look, then points out one particular part of the harvest colony. “No, look over there. That’s light, right?”

Risa peers at it, then nods. “Faint, but yeah, it is. Maybe we angle towards that?”

Connor nods in agreement, manipulating the controls to accordingly change their trajectory. They stand in silent union, hands interlocked, watching the distribution colony loom ever closer. Risa waits for some alarm to be triggered, some sentry ship to be sent after them, but nothing happens.

“I don’t like this,” she says uneasily. “They should have seen us by now.”

“We’ve got good cloaking technology,” Connor mentions hesitantly. “Could be that their scanners just haven’t picked us up yet. To be honest, the fewer confrontations, the better. The element of surprise is best when it’s on our side.”

Risa shrugs, accepting this. Sure, she’s glad not to be fired on immediately, but something about this whole affair still seems off somehow. She can’t help this uncanny sense that something is terribly wrong, and more so than just the fact that they’re taking a crazy risk.

“Five minutes to landing,” Connor announces. “Strap in. I’ll try for a clean landing, but I’m still not an ace pilot yet.”

“You’re excellent at bedside manner, though,” Risa quips.

Connor glances up just long enough to shoot her a wry grin before returning to his controls. Risa takes a seat, buckling herself in just in case. To Connor’s credit, his landing is quite smooth. The second the ships start moving, they’re instantly hurrying to the escape hatch. They won’t have long to make this work, they’ve got to make every second count. Connor tosses Risa a tranq gun then takes one for himself. She flashes him a smile right before they open the hatch.

“We can do this,” she tells him. “We’re getting out.”

“We’re getting out,” Connor agrees, and opens up the hatch. Risa has no idea if they’re lying or not. She supposes she’ll find out soon enough.

They run out as quickly as they can. Risa can see the tower of a security station not far off, which isn’t great. As they hurry towards the doors leading towards the heart of the harvest colony center, Risa waits for Juvey-cops to run out and start shooting at them. Maybe a colony like this, with this many distributes all waiting for their end, would even have hired private soldiers, just in case.

Still, nobody comes. No klaxons blare even despite the obvious intrusion. Risa exchanges a nervous glance with Connor. “Someone should have noticed by now,” she whispers.

Connor nods his agreement. They arrive at the tall gate leading to the center. Connor reaches towards the control panel, but, as it turns out, he doesn’t have to. It’s already been shot to pieces, a small ribbon of smoke rising from the destroyed controls. The doors are cracked open; Connor kicks one open and it falls to the ground completely, the resulting clang echoing off of empty walls. They freeze, but no one comes.

Connor moves to go inside, but Risa holds out an arm to stop him. “Do you smell that?” She asks.

He pauses, then frowns. “Smells like smoke. A lot of it.”

A terrible idea is occurring to Risa. “You know the light you saw when we were nearing the colony? What if it wasn’t the light of a building?”

Connor turns back to her, ignoring the empty doorway behind him. It won’t matter, actually. No one will come to kill him, because no one is here at all. “What if it wasn’t a light?” She repeats, “What if it was a fire? A fire that consumed everything here?”

Connor’s eyes widen. He turns back to the doorway and carefully steps through. Risa joins him a heartbeat later, and together they stare at the empty grounds. Bullet holes riddle the walls, the windows, the ground beneath their feet. Risa hears no sounds save for the wind whistling through holes in the complex and her own harsh breathing.

“Connor,” she says unsteadily, “I think everyone here is gone.”

unwind tag list: @reinekes-fox, @sirofreak, @locke-writes

all tags list: @wordsarelife

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