#prev vet had me SO stressed like fuck me

[stellewriites]

vet’s verdict is to swap meowmeow’s food over and give her the portion of a 4.5kg cat to hopefully help her out

[nowoyas]

Koi no Yokan 10: Get it out of your system (Nishinoya Yuu/Reader)

First - Prev - Next - M.list - Ao3

A/N: this chapter was tough to write. please enjoy however you can.

Summary: The long ride back to Miyagi comes to an end. You open old wounds and gain a new one.

Warnings and tags: blanket series warnings. this chapter contains explicit death of a parent. also: implied animal death and implied/assumed homophobia (light). some suggestive themes.

Words: ~4700

The foretold Soba albums are remarkable. Despite his promise of unlimited access, Noya curates the photos for you, starting at the very beginning and not quite handing his phone over to you directly. You suspect this has more to do with the fact that you saw the text his phone unlocked on, and given the opportunity, you're fucking deleting the photo Tanaka sent him of the two of you napping together before lunch.

Instead, you lean in close to see his screen properly, head resting against his side. Initially, he'd shown a split second of awkwardness at the contact, but your attempt to respect his comfort level and pull away had seen him wrapping an arm around your waist and pulling you right back down.

The photo he shows you now is one of the earliest: a girl, a bit thicker than Noya or the other sister you've seen but looking to be around his age now at the time of the photo, holds what's clearly Soba as a kitten—99% fluff and 1% anger. "This's Mei and Soba," Noya tells you in a low voice. "Mei and I were the ones that rescued her—I think this picture was right after we brought her back from getting checked at the vet? He said she was barely old enough to be separated from her mom, but when Mei found her, the mom was…"

You get the implication. "That's so sad. Do you guys know what happened to her mom?"

"We think she was hit by a car," he answers.

You nearly laugh. It's too perfect. "Mine, too," you whisper bitterly.

He tenses against you. "What?"

"Right in front of the house."

"Fuck, I'm so—"

You wind your arm around him, eyes locked on Soba and Mei. "Don't, Senpai. I don't want it."

He clears his throat awkwardly. Drags his thumb in mindless circles over your waist. "Okay. I won't, then."

"Tell me more about Soba?"

He obeys without a second thought, scrolling through to show you more as he continues telling you about Soba—early days, the household war over her name that the mysterious third sister, Satsuki, eventually won. (Apparently, he'd wanted to name her Miku. He refused to elaborate on this.) His arm doesn't leave you after that, either—one hand flicking through his photos, one resting too-hot on your waist.

It's a little weird, hearing him talk without raising his voice. Part of it, you think, is the weird tension that still hasn't quite left the others—the rest of the bus is relatively quiet. There's still noise, of course. But normally, Hinata and Kageyama would be at each other's throats, or else Hinata would be loudly chattering to someone—pissing off Tsukishima, or excitedly hyping up Tanaka. Unlike the bus ride down here, where the two boys weren't present, you're dimly aware in the back of your mind that they should be disrupting the peace.

"Hey. Where's your head?"

"Sorry."

"Oh, don't say that. You were all out of it earlier, too."

"Just… worried about those two," you whisper.

"Who, Shouyo and Kageyama?"

A nod.

"Is worrying about it gonna change anything?"

"It's not like I can just not worry about it. What, do you just decide not to worry and then not do it?"

"Pretty much, yeah."

You blink up at him, somewhere between awe and disgust. "That's insane."

"It took some practice. But, you know, unless you're gonna do something about it, looking at pictures of my cat is a way better use of your time. Otherwise you're just stressing yourself out, and that's the opposite of what we're trying to do right now."

"I don't understand how you can not worry about it."

"I mean, I'm worried. I'm just not paying too much attention to it 'cus there's not much point. Especially not when there's this picture of Soba in a bowtie Satsuki made for her you need to look at before I move on."

Oh my god that's the cutest thing you've ever seen. You coo, eyes sparkling at baby Soba.

"The fact that you have this many photos of your cat is still the most jarring thing to me," you tease. "Tough guy and his two thousand photos of his cat wearing cowboy hats and bowties."

"It's closer to one thousand, thank you very much. Soba's a very important cat." He clears his throat, drops his voice even lower, like he doesn't want anyone else to hear him. "My… I'm pretty sure she saved my sister's life."

"Oh. Like…"

He nods. "I don't really remember much, but our dad left when I was pretty young. I guess it probably messed me up pretty bad, and I used to be a lot more like Mei when I was a kid, but she always took it way harder than even Okaa-san did. She started doing stuff after we found Soba. I don't know where she went, but it was kinda like she brought my sister back."

"Are you just telling me this because I told you about my mom?"

He shrugs, the movement awkward with you pressed so completely into his side. "A little. It didn't seem fair."

…well, at least he's honest.

"But, I mean, I also just want you to know. That's okay, right?"

"…yeah." You shuffle a little, press your thigh into his in a way that's meant to be comforting. "Soba's a good cat."

He nods. "The best cat."

"And… thanks. For sharing and—and all that. I'm sorry about your dad and your sister."

He goes back to showing you photos of Soba in relative silence until his phone battery hits red. Then, it's you actually reading your book, half-resting it on his lap so he can read along if he wants. Impressively, he actually seems to be. He taps your side whenever he's done reading the page, and you nod whenever you're ready for the page to turn.

You don't untangle for the rest of the several-hour bus ride.

~

Back at the school gets you all a meeting, sat in a circle on the gym floor, and reminds you with stunning clarity that promising to tell Noya the story over dinner means you have to make a real dinner and actually tell him the story. The teasing from a few of the others on the way you were cuddled up when you got back to the school falls completely flat—you're too wrapped up in dread to even think about being embarrassed for the tangled legs or the comfort of Noya's chest beneath your ear.

So you respond the way you always do: get changed slow, linger in the changing room until Shimizu and Yachi have both gotten into their school uniforms and gone on ahead for the night. Check your phone in slow motion, pretending like you would have received any texts when the only people you talk to have been on a bus with you for the past five hours.

(Tanaka has texted you. Multiple times, in fact; you now have two pictures of you cuddling Noya awake and asleep, as well as several teasing messages about your new boyfriend.)

Eventually, you can't justify wasting any more time. Noya will come drag you out if you take too much longer. You meander past the gym just in time to see a panicked Yachi run past, yelling for an upperclassman—any upperclassman.

Then you hear the shouting inside the gym.

You poke your head inside, drop your bag as you watch Hinata clock Kageyama right in the face.

Not on your fucking watch.

~

Noya leans against the school gate with Ryu. He's waiting, of course, for you. His side feels buzzy where you'd spent the majority of the past three hours pressed into him. He keeps thinking, guiltily, about your leg pressed into his, migrating over the course of two hours until neither of you were acknowledging the fact that you were halfway in his lap. And now, dinner.

Later tonight, he'll text Ryu, a series of all-caps messages begging for divine answers on what the fuck it's supposed to mean when a girl goes out of her way to cuddle up to you. He won't include your dinner conversation, but he'll include a too-detailed description of how it felt when you sighed against him, the way you melted slowly over the course of the ride. He'll give even more details to Satsuki, red-faced and falling apart, desperate for a straight answer from the only sister available to give advice, and when she teases him—you should have just pulled her into your lap the rest of the way, stupid—he'll feel no more enlightened than before he debased himself asking for his sister's advice. He'll end the night with an embarrassing new search history that starts with how to tell if a girl meant anything by cuddling with you and ends with a browser in incognito mode, no new insights, a profound sense of guilt, and a mess to clean up in his bedroom.

For now though, he's fully not processing what Ryu's saying to him, though he knows it's about you, about the leap from teasing jokes to napping together.

He's processing it even less when Yachi runs up to them, white as a sheet and nearly screaming.

"Woah, Yacchan, what's—"

"P-please! I-in the gym, they're—they're gonna die!" she babbles, already crying.

Noya shares a look with Ryu and runs off ahead. Ryu can be the one to calm her down—Noya's faster.

This is how he finds Shouyo: rage in his eyes, voice hoarse as he shouts, cut off abruptly as he's thrown to the ground.

This is how he finds Kageyama: swinging back, hardly paying attention to anything except the middle blocker he's fighting before a fist closes in his shirt and roughly shoves him back.

This is how he finds you: right in the middle of it, taking a punch in the mouth clearly not meant for you as you throw one to the ground and roughly force the other back a good few steps.

"That's enough!" you snap. The other two are shell-shocked at the sight of you. "What the hell do you think you're doing!?"

"[surname]-san—" Kageyama starts, eyes wide. "I didn't mean to—"

"Be quiet. Both of you, sit. Don't even look at each other. You scared the hell out of Yachi-san, you know that?"

Noya stands, frozen, watching you stand over them with your hands on your hips like you didn't just take a punch to the mouth.

"Right. I'm sorry," they mutter in sync.

"I'm sure you are. Is this about the spike thing?"

They both look instantly incensed, talking over each other.

"He said he wasn't gonna set to me—"

"We don't have time to focus on this—"

Your voice cuts them off sharply. "I asked you both a yes or no question. I'm not interested in hearing anything else right now."

"…yes."

"Oi oi oi!" Ryu's voice cuts in, footsteps stuttering to a stop beside him in the doorway. "You two—"

You don't even look up at the intrusion. "One of you, find me a first aid kit. The other, go find me a couple rags and get them wet. Cold water, please. Yachi-san, take a seat. Your heart needs to rest before I enlist you in anything."

Noya's muscles tense, and he moves, remembering vaguely where the first aid kit is normally hung on the wall. Ryu silently moves to the storage closet to find some rags.

"Now. Admittedly, I'm still not that informed on volleyball. Is getting into fistfights with your teammates how you make it to nationals?"

"…no," Shouyo mutters.

"Do you win matches by scaring the shit out of the most gentle-hearted manager in existence?"

"…no."

"So what the hell do you think you're accomplishing right now? Fifty words or less from each of you. Hinata, you can start."

"He—he said that he wasn't going to set to me anymore! I'm just trying to improve what we have! If that quick is our greatest weapon, then—"

Kageyama growls. "Then you need to—"

"It's not your turn to talk." Silence. "You've got twelve more words, Hinata."

"…I'm not worth anything on the court without that attack," he finishes lamely. Noya might not have heard him if he hadn't come up beside you, placing the first aid kit in your waiting hand.

You crouch down, start rifling through the kit with a nod of thanks to Noya. "You're trying to improve things because you want to keep being a regular."

"…yeah. I just want to keep playing volleyball."

"Alright. Kageyama. Fifty words or less."

Kageyama grits his teeth. You're not even looking at him—instead, you're looking over Hinata, a bandage in hand.

"If we spend all our time and energy working on making a change that might not work, it's just going to hurt us more later. Hinata should be focusing on improving as an all-around player instead of wasting time on something we've tried before and couldn't make work. All this—"

"That's fifty."

"Oi—"

"I said fifty words or less."

"But—"

"You just punched me in the face, so sorry, but you get to talk when I say you get to talk. You used your fifty." You accept a cold rag from Ryu, press it firmly against a red spot on Hinata's cheek. "Hold that there. It's not quite an ice pack, but it'll help with the swelling and maybe prevent later bruising."

"Um, [surname]-san, your lip—"

"This isn't about me, but thank you for your concern."

"Oi, did Kageyama seriously—" Ryu whispers to Noya.

Noya nods. "I don't think she even noticed. He got her right in the mouth."

You shift to looking over Kageyama for injuries, roughly smoothing a bandaid in place on his face. "I know I'm new to all this stuff, but you two weren't there for the start of the training camp. Right now, the team is built around that attack. Without it, you can't win against high-level teams. And with it, you also can't seem to win, but you're much closer."

Noya winces. You're right, but…

When you're satisfied with the first aid administered, another damp rag being pressed against Kageyama's own bruises, you lean back, settling on your knees to look at them both. "I don't think Hinata's wrong for wanting to improve it when it's not working. And I don't think Kageyama-san is wrong for wanting there to be focus on improving in other areas. It seems to me, as someone whose entire job is to watch you guys and pay attention, that both of those things are going to be necessary if you want to start winning. But that's just me."

After a long moment of silence, you sigh. "How are both of you feeling?"

"Fine," Shouyo mutters. Kageyama simply glares at the floor.

"Good enough. Let's get this mess cleaned up and go home. Gym inspections tomorrow, so you have a day to work through your shit before practicing together again. Do us all a favor and use it wisely. Solve it however, I don't care, but no more scaring Yachi-san and no more actual fistfights."

You rise, move to help them clean up the scattered volleyballs and take down the net. Noya grabs your shoulder immediately, turns you to inspect the damage.

That would be what Hinata was trying to point out. Now that you're actually facing him, he can see the split in your lip, the blood lazily trailing down your chin.

"Nope," he says immediately. "Come on, it's your turn to get first aid."

"Senpai, I'm—"

"Bleeding. Those three can clean up just fine. Let me take a look."

You roll your eyes, but let him guide you to sit against the wall while he inspects your bleeding mouth. Yachi seems no better for the wear after returning—the fight's done, which leaves her full brainspace to panic over you and your bloody lip.

"[s-surname]-chan, h-how did you—"

You scoff at her panic, pat the ground next to you. "Sit down. You look like you're gonna pass out."

She obediently sits. Noya crouches in front of you, tilts your chin so he can dab at the blood running down your face. "I'm gonna kill him," he growls.

"Don't. I knew what I was getting into. 'Sides, he clearly didn't mean to hit me."

"But he did," he grumbles.

Your eyes slide Yachi-ways, amusement clear in your features. "Senpai. You realize you can't really do anything for a split lip, right? It's stop the bleeding and then go about your life."

"But—"

"Yachi-san, are you okay?" you interrupt him, turning to the poor girl. "You're still super pale."

She nods slowly. "I… it's not like I got involved in the fight or anything. It was just… scary…"

You flash a reassuring smile, reach over to pat her on the shoulder. "You did good. It's over now, yeah?"

"Right… d-do you think they'll be… okay…?"

"They will if they've got their friends with them through it."

Noya stands, helps you to your feet. Offers a hand to Yachi, too, who politely refuses. "I seriously thought you might pass out back there."

She shakes her head. "I'll be okay. Thank you."

You brush yourself off. "Sorry you guys had to see that, though. Yachi-san, if you're feeling alright, maybe walk back with Hinata? You gel pretty well with him, and I don't think either of them want to hear any more from me tonight."

She nods. You ask the same favor of Ryu with walking back Kageyama; effortlessly, everything is cleaned up, the two first-years involved in the fight get sent on, and you walk back with Noya, carrying the bloodied rag in your hand.

"You're learning a lot about me today, I guess," you comment, a thin veneer of amusement over your voice. "We haven't even gotten to the part where I cook you dinner to make up for telling you all about my trauma immediately after."

"Hey, I'm not complaining," he jokes. If he runs right at the dinner thing, you'll probably clam up again. "Stern [name]-san back there was kinda hot, though. You need a husband?"

Wrong thing to say, Noya, wrong thing to say—

You toss your head back and laugh. "I dunno. I've gotten a lot of applications recently. Pretty sure they're all the same guy, though."

"Damn. He must have eyes or something."

"I'm not sure he does, really. I'm kinda a mess."

He pulls you into a side hug. "You do a really good job of pretending not to be."

"You're not even going to deny it?"

"Oh, sorry, you're not a mess. You alone are the one human being in existence who has ever had it together."

"Thank you, thank you." You pat his chest. His nerves light on fire at the contact—he nearly misses a step.

You lead him past his own house, where you normally part. Your mind is somewhere else—he lets it drift there for now. There'll be plenty of time over dinner to figure out what's going on inside your head.

~

Your hands shake as you prepare dinner. You didn't really have much of a plan, but curry makes a lot and lets you eat well for over a week after cooking once, so you tie an apron around your waist, peel potatoes, chop garlic, and get nearly half an hour to think about the elephant before you let it into the room.

Noya, for his part, waits as you work. He sits at the table, watches you swish about the kitchen, watches you grate an apple and wipe down the salt container and dump lemon juice into your bowl of grated apple. He's patient, just to surprise you. When you throw stock into the pot and drop a lid on top, you turn to him at last, feeling the dread so acutely that you end up turning back to the sink and washing whatever dishes you've dirtied in the past half an hour.

"Did you want to wait until we were eating to talk to me about it?" he asks at last, head propped up against his hand as he watches you. "I can help with dishes."

"No," you say, too quickly. "I just—I need to do something with my hands. Sorry. I'm nervous."

"It's alright. You've got good reason to be. How's your lip feeling?"

"I've had worse."

He raises an eyebrow at that, but doesn't press.

You wipe the knife clean and sigh.

"Alright. I think—I think I'm ready."

~

Twenty months and five days before you make curry with Nishinoya Yuu sitting in your kitchen, your parents finally figure out how hard it is to love you.

Ten days before that, you'd taken midterms and simply chosen not to care about them. You did whatever, you rushed in, you didn't prepare. And you bombed two exams.

For ten days, you didn't tell anyone. You crumpled the test papers into the bottom of your bookbag and forgot about them. Who cared, anyway? It was midterms and you were fourteen. They weren't even final exams. You had other, more important things to worry about, like the new game that just came out and impressing Kasumi from your homeroom—so cool, so pretty, so unabashed.

(To Noya, you don't mention her name. You don't mention her gender, or her shiny black hair, or how soft it felt between your fingers. How easy it was to find excuses to touch it.)

Your parents cared. They were rarely both home after school. They both loved their jobs, loved to work, loved each other, and loved you less. Love was real and it was different from person to person—shameless, bubbly affection between your parents, the thrilling swoop of your stomach as you stole kisses with Kasumi behind the arcade and fished for extra yen to try one more time for the rabbit plush in the crane game.

The parent you got to have on November 11th, 2010 was your mom. You took an early bath, left your bag a mess on the living room floor. Emerged with skin tinged pink from too-hot water, already in your pajamas long before dinner.

Your mother stood in the living room, a crumpled piece of paper in her hand.

Your math exam, a stunning twelve points out of a potential hundred at the top. You'd understood all the concepts, you just hadn't cared.

You always wanted to test whether people actually liked you.

If your mother loved you, she'd look at the paper and love you anyway. She'd work to love you, fourteen years old and filling out two answers on your answer sheet before doodling over the rest because you just didn't care anymore. She'd smile, exasperated, and ask why, and then no matter what you said, she wouldn't care about the answer because she'd love you anyway.

If your mother loved you, whenever she inevitably learned about Kasumi, about your infatuation with her berry-flavored chapstick and soft skin, there wouldn't be a fight. She'd look at you and see you happy with another girl. She'd smile, exasperated. She'd ask why, but wouldn't care about the answer. No matter what you said, she would love you anyway.

The way she looked at you wasn't loving. It was disappointed.

"Why does your test paper look like this, [name]?" she asked. In your memories, her voice sounds like ice, almost pretty in how cold it is. You're sure it probably sounded a little nicer at the time.

You'd mumbled something halfway truthful, something about you'll love me even if I'm a failure, right? and she'd looked actually hurt.

"You're not a failure," she said simply. "My daughter is not a failure. She's brilliant. She's just lost her way a little."

You didn't lose your way you loved her you loved her YOU LOVED HER—

You remember your temper flaring. You remember yelling.

You remember your mother going out for a walk—give me a minute. You calm yourself down, like we talked about, and I'm going to calm myself down outside, and then we can come back to this conversation, okay, sweetheart?

You remember sitting, arms crossed, on the couch. Screaming into a pillow. Screaming not into a pillow.

You remember laying on the couch, the way you always would with her when waiting for Dad to come home, late at the office again. The way you and Dad would when she was the one working late.

There was love in this house—once. The last time it had been here was November 10th, 2010.

Eventually, still angry, hoping to maybe yell at Mom in public so the neighbors would see how much she didn't love you, you stormed outside.

You saw your mom, returning from her walk.

You saw the car.

You're told that you screamed, but you don't remember it.

~

"So… yeah." The roux block breaks harshly in your hands with a crisp snap. Noya doesn't speak, so you keep talking. "Otoo-san has barely looked at me ever since. I don't blame him. I swing between trying to get him to be my father again and just not giving a fuck."

"Holy shit, [name]-san."

"I thought the whole neighborhood knew I got my mom killed."

He shakes his head. "I had no idea. Fuck, I'm—I'm so sorry."

"Please," you say, voice too sharp and jagged. You have to pause before you try again. "Don't be."

"What should I be, then?"

You stare at him a long moment, not quite understanding the question.

"…I don't know."

He stands, joins you at the stove. You stare into the pot, skim the scum pointedly to avoid looking at him.

"You know it wasn't your fault, right?"

"They never caught the driver of the car. He slowed down a little bit, started to get out, and then saw me and sped off."

"Holy shit."

"Yeah."

There was love in this house once. It was real, and took work, and it was earned.

It was warm and comforting. It felt like a hug from behind, standing at the stove and dissolving blocks of curry roux into a pot. It felt like quiet acceptance, like choosing not to leave when the door wasn't locked and no one was stopping you. It was sitting up on the couch, waiting for someone to come home from wherever they'd been out late to make life good for everyone else in the house.

It felt like the secret moments behind the shift from a question—why—to a smile, a decision.

There are realities you have to accept, and as far as you're concerned, there's realities you don't. One of the former is your mom's absence, the love that left with her. Still another is the raw facts of this scene: mixing curry, adding too much spice and still not enough, sitting in the living room and talking and laughing with Noya as he tastes your curry and promptly lets a marriage proposal leave his lips, breezy, easy, familiar.

"Nine hundred sixty-one," you say with a smile.

One of the latter types of realities looks more like this: a warm feeling in your chest, a familiar flutter in your stomach. The heat of his arm on your shoulder, the persistence of the smile on your lips. Complaints about the spice of the curry hurting your split lip met with playful teasing that you'll still think about laying on your futon tonight, long after he's gone home.

And you'll need one damn good yes to accept a reality you don't have to.

Later, you'll feel hollowed out from the mood swings of the day. Tomorrow, you'll feel too wrung-out to get out of bed in the morning. Tonight, you just feel warm. So warm, in fact, that you're not even mad when he pulls out his phone and produces a video of you, half-asleep and pressed into his side on the bus a few hours earlier, as proof that actually, [name]-san, you'll find I only need to ask nine hundred and sixty more times.

Nine hundred and sixty it is.

Tags: @deeplightgarden @idonthaveanameideayet @dusstory @kazunish

[gaoau]

So be mine and your innocence I will consume

Raison d'Être warnings — none. word count — 1.1k

prev. — next.

"Chifuyu-san!" came [Name]'s exalted voice through the speaker of his phone. She didn't even give him time to properly greet her. For a moment, he thought she was bawling again, but then he caught the faint bounce in her words, decorated with a joyful chuckle. Chifuyu hummed to let her know she had all of his attention, signaling Kazutora to take over the cash register. "I just got a call from the vet! They said we can go pick Ai up." He could very clearly hear through her sentences the smile she was wearing.

It brought a smile of his own to his face, eyes lighting up. "That's great, [Name]-san! I told you he'd be fine."

"I never doubted you, trust me." Before Chifuyu could reply with friendly banter, he caught the sound of various voices calling out to [Name], bidding their goodbyes for the day. There was a very particular, very excited one that stood out. [Name] laughed into the microphone as she pulled the phone away from her. "Bye, Chika-san, I'll see you tomorrow!" The rustling of her clothes made him guess she was waving at them.

"Are you still at work?"

"I'm heading out to get Ai. Sorry, I know you are still at work. I just wanted to let you know that Ai is good."

He didn't want to think too much about it—mostly because he couldn't afford having his thoughts straying while in the middle of a call—but the way she absentmindedly said we, like Ai was equal parts his and her dog, with how much the two of them loved him, made his chest tighten. For a moment, he expected her to ask if he could tag along to go get him. It had been a long, stressful week since the last time either of them saw the adorable puppy. So he bit the bullet. "Do you want me to come with you?" he asked in an impulse.

There was a prolonged silence from her end of the call. Chifuyu instantly regretted opening his mouth. The moment he was about to take it back, [Name]'s voice nearly knocked him out cold, "Sure. I'll get a cab to XJ Land and then we can go."

Oh. "Okay, I'll see you in a bit, [Name]-san."

"See you."

When he hung up the call, he had to stay staring at his darkened phone screen for a few moments to contemplate the interaction he had just had. What was that impulse? Ai was [Name]'s responsibility; as much as she asked for help and advice, it wasn't his place to intrude unless she requested he did. He was worried about the dog, yes, without a shadow of doubt, yet he could simply wait until [Name] dropped by sometime on her way to walk him in the park.

He returned on autopilot to inform Kazutora he'd be leaving for a while. Lost in thought, biting at the inside of his lip, he was startled when he felt his employee glaring daggers through him. His shoulders jolted. "Kazutora-kun, fuck… What is it?"

"Are you gonna go see [Name]?"

Chifuyu narrowed his eyes. That was an odd question. "She's coming to pick me up. Why?" He tried not to think too much about his beauty mark in [Name]'s sketchbook.

Kazutora's face transformed from a deadpan to a judgmental cocked brow. He'd never wanted to strangle a man so much in his life, not even in his most unstable middle-school moments. He stared Chifuyu down like he was the dumbest man on Earth—he probably was. Kazutora limited himself to a sigh before turning his eyes to the customers that walked into the shop. He really was surrounded by idiots. "Welcome!" he chimed on practiced instinct.

Chifuyu couldn't even begin to guess what that was all about.

A few minutes after that strange display of sheer disappointment from Kazutora, [Name] showed up at the store. She waved through the window and Kazutora reciprocated the greeting, holding back the urge to sit both her and Chifuyu down and demand they talked. Especially [Name], what the fuck was she doing? It wasn't his problem anyway, so he just watched Chifuyu leave with her, chatting animatedly like the best of friends.

By the time they reached the vet, [Name]'s excited grin couldn't grow any larger. It seemed as though she had mentalized herself to see things in a clearer light. She could handle her own brain. Chifuyu never knew how happy he could be seeing somebody else be happy. With Ai in her arms, somewhat limp and drowsy from the anesthesia wearing off, the absolute glee painting her features made his own heart feel full of joy. Turning to look him in the eyes with a glimmering gaze, [Name] left Ai in his care for a few moments as she went to handle some paperwork.

When she came back, she immediately bent to Ai's eye level and cupped the puppy's head in her palms, pressing her nose up against his. "Hey, bubs," she cooed in a high-pitched voice, "how are you feeling, boy? Are you better now?" The smile resting on her lips was natural at this point. She flipped his ear back to check the stitches where the vet had closed the wound. A relieved sigh escaped her and her shoulders visibly loosened.

Still holding the half-dormant dog against his chest, Chifuyu admired her as she baby-talked Ai. A rosy tint spread on his cheeks at the endearing sight. [Name] was so happy—what was he supposed to do? It was contagious, he couldn't help it. She was radiating so much joy he'd never known and for good reason. Now that Ai was okay, so was she.

Suddenly she looked up at him, her fingers still scratching Ai under his chin. She straightened up with that weightless simper she was starting to get comfortable wearing. Chifuyu could see in her face just how relieved and genuinely overjoyed she felt. Before he knew it, she was wrapping her arms around him in an unannounced hug. "Thank you, Chifuyu-san, I don't think I would've been able to handle this without you. Seriously, I mean it."

"It's, uh—" He cleared his throat, trying to keep his breath from getting stuck. "It's no problem. Anytime, [Name]-san." He hesitated in his own movements, but he shifted all of Ai's weight onto one arm and reciprocated her embrace with the other one.

[Name] was much warmer than he had expected—or maybe that was himself. Her voice reverberated in his ear with pure gratefulness. She held onto him so tightly, like he was the most important fortune she'd ever come across and she didn't want to let him go. He found that he really loved seeing her be content with herself and her life; he hoped it would stay like this for as long as he could help her.

[canyouhearthelight]

The Miys, Ch. 33

This was a very difficult chapter to write, mostly because of the discussion of the death penalty involved.  I know it is a controversial topic, and trying to handle it in a way that worked was challenging.

Another panic attack in this chapter, so be on the lookout for that. Also, content warning for blood in a non-violent situation, along with discussion of injuries previously sustained.

The corridor was an uproar, and I wasn’t hesitating to contribute to it.  Conor’s voice was booming his objections as my sister tried to calm him down.  Xiomara looked both apologetic and harried as I argued with her.  Execution?  Earth had abolished the death penalty decades ago, with the establishment of the Global Parliament; how could the rest of the Council even consider this?  

She must have realized that there was no way to quiet us down until we said our piece, because Xiomara finally ushered us into the Council Chamber to stop the scene we were causing.  Once the door closed behind us, she took a deep breath and ran her hand over her hair. “Mr. Mac Maoilir,” she pointed to a chair. “I will hear you out next, if you have any questions.  No shouting, or you will be escorted from the room, immediately, do you understand me? You shouldn’t even be in here to begin with, so consider yourself extremely lucky.” Conor gave a tight nod and took the seat she indicated. She turned to me and her face softened slightly. “Sophia, please understand.  We had no idea that Galactic Law uses this kind of penalty, not when we felt so enlightened for stopping the practice on Earth.��

“Then why are we going along with this?” I demanded.  “I’m the person she tried to kill, and I’m the on objecting.  Doesn’t that tell you something?”

“Give us a better solution,” Xiomara begged. I was taken aback; Xiomara Kalloe was a strong, proud warrior.  She didn’t plead with anyone. “Talk through it all, pros and cons.  If you find a solution, we will try to convince Miys to consider it.”

I exhaled, trying to gather my thoughts. “Can we imprison her?” Solitary confinement for life was the maximum penalty back on Earth, Before.

“If it was just her, yes,” Xiomara nodded. “But there is a total of fifteen people involved, and we don’t have the space to lock all of them up.”

“I can’t imagine how we would isolate them, anyway,” I muttered. “Making them share space would be dangerous, because then they could work together.  Keep them sedated until we reach the colony?” I asked hopefully.

“And then what?” my sister spoke up. “Then they would be alive, able to sabotage our efforts to start over.”

“Ugh,” I groaned.  “We can try to rehabilitate them, don’t you see that?  Everyone deserves a chance to do this right.  We’re supposed to be the ones worth saving!  ‘Orderly, decisive, direct, practical’. That’s Arantxa. That’s why she’s here.”

“Yes, Sophia, that’s why she’s here,” Xiomara sighed and gestured to the room.  “According to the testimony of the others involved, she was a Baconist. High-ranking.”

Baconist. The people who triggered the End, and turned our shining achievement of FTL travel into weapons of a slow apocalypse. Today seemed to be the day for my breath to desert me.  “How high-ranking?” I whispered.  When she didn’t respond, my temper had all it could take. “How high-ranking, Xiomara!?” I shouted, making everyone in the room flinch.  I must have looked like a lunatic, and in that moment, I could not have possibly cared less.  “She came in my home, worked by my side for months, heard all of our stories about surviving the world her fucking people created, and never even looked guilty. How high-ranking was that heartless bitch?” I spat. Any sympathy I ever had for Arantxa was gone with this new information.

“We only have hearsay from the others,” a calm voice interjected.  Turning, I saw Grey approaching. “Sophia, I can understand that you are furious, and rightfully so.  However, the stress is not good for your recovery.” They pointed at my nose and held out a cloth.  I took it, only to discover that my nose was pouring blood.  “Please, take a seat.  Tyche, can you bring her some tea?  I would, but I am not sure how she takes it and I trust you to know.” Gently, they maneuvered me into an empty seat.  “To answer your question, the testimony of the others involved indicates that Ms. Bidarte is the highest-ranking member of their group on the Ark.  If that information is correct, it is immaterial what power she held on Earth.  Here and now, she is said to be their leader.”  Tyche arrived with a mug of steaming tea, setting it on the table and rubbing my arm comfortingly.  Grey handed me the mug as I moved the cloth away from my face.  “The bleeding has slowed, that is good,” they smiled thinly. Their calm demeanor and matter-of-fact tone were working magic on my anger.

I grudgingly took a sip of the tea, before trying to get back to the original argument. “Execution, Grey?  Are we really considering this?”

“She and the others tried to kill our hosts, and kill everyone on the Ark,” Grey stated. “She, personally, tried to kill you and came closer than I think you realize. Even with all the technology available, Miys was not entirely certain you would ever wake up.”

“Several people on board have killed,” I argued. “If we execute them all, I’m probably on that list.”

They only shook their head. “That was in self-defense, this was not in any way the same thing.  We were trying to survive.  They were trying to bring a complete end to humanity, the exact opposite of what the Ark is for.”

“We’ve had people in our history try the same thing,” I begged, a Hail-Mary if there ever was one. “We didn’t execute them.”

“Those people attacked ethnic groups, not the entirety of human kind,” Grey told me. “I’m certainly not saying one is worse than the other, but it excuses much in the eyes of history. Additionally, those who were imprisoned were old men, at the end of their lives.  The majority were actually executed, whether it was in the attempts to stop them, apprehend them, or by their own hands.  I believe, deep down, you know this makes logical sense, but you do not want to admit that.”

Dammit, they were right.  Part of me wanted her dead, but not for her crimes.  I wanted to see her punished for betraying me, my sister…Conor, especially.  “We are supposed to be better than this,” I whispered, mostly referring to myself.

“The Hujylsogox will not fault us for following the same laws as they do,” Grey told me.  “We will still go to our new home.  Miys has been very worried about you, as much as they tried to hide it.  They have also expressed feeling guilty for what has taken place, since they were the ones who approved everyone brought on board.  We have been over the data they had on each person involved, and there is nothing to indicate that they had extremist views.  In addition, only two are shown in the files to have even known each other Before.”

“I thought Noah vetted everyone before we were brought on board,” Conor ventured as he scooted over. Grey opened their mouth to say something, but he raised both hands defensively. “Tyche sedated me, cheeky thing, so no more yelling.” He pointed to a patch on his neck.  Grey nodded, apparently satisfied. He continued, taking the gesture as permission. “If we were all vetted, including them, how did they manage to get on board the Ark?”

“No one believes they’re the bad guy,” I answered mournfully.  “Think about it.  Before everything happened, a lot of people agreed with what the Baconists were saying: why should a bunch of rich people who refused to stop climate change allowed to be the first people to run away from it?  Hell, even I agreed with that part.  That doesn’t mean I agreed with the methods, especially not what ended up happening.  And we have pretty much no way to track what happened in the After, other than written records, and those are definitely not the most reliable sources.  Noah definitely isn’t at fault on this one.” I rubbed my temples, feeling a headache coming on from all the emotional swings of the past few hours.  “Okay, when does this trial actually start?  The sooner it starts, the sooner it will be over with.”

“That’s it? You’re just going to go along with this?” Conor asked skeptically.

“The trial is happening, regardless of the punishment if she’s convicted,” I sighed.  “Do I like the idea of executing them? No.  And I honestly don’t think anyone in this room likes the idea.  Xiomara definitely didn’t look she was on board.  Eino comes from a country that hasn’t had a death penalty in over two hundred years, so I’m pretty sure he’s not on board with it either. Unfortunately, I can’t argue with Grey on the logical sense of it: those fifteen people tried to kill all of humanity.  Not even for the first time, it turns out.”  I blinked a few times as my eyes starting stinging. “This all just sucks.” I managed to choke out in a whisper.

He scooped me out of my chair and into his lap before I could protest, wrapping his arms around me like he had the night before.  “Yeah, it does,” he agreed. “But if you say this makes sense, even if you don’t like it, I won’t make this harder on you.  It’s bad enough as it is.”

I nodded weakly and sniffed several times before taking a few deep breaths to calm myself down.  I couldn’t even muster the energy to be embarrassed by the display we were making.  Finally, I calmed down enough to stand.  Glancing over at Xiomara, I nodded.  She gave me a weak smile and nodded back, understanding that I was ready to face this.

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