#they're technically more bondmates than wives because idk what gender even is on neva

[omgkatsudonplease]

Milasara, Honey - Kehlani

day 6 part 2!!

In her small northern hometown of Rodnina, Mila Babicheva was known as a magic-child. Endowed with the ability to project her emotions onto surrounding people, Mila had spent an entire childhood easily bending others to her will.

Rodnina was far away from the glittering capital, which heightened its desirability in her childish imagination. She’d dreamt of walking through golden-lit streets and crystal avenues, venturing out to the crack of the Great Waterfall to see how far down she’d have to drop to hit the bottom. When the Bitterfrost came, she would dream of flying on the frozen falls armed only with skates, catching snowflakes in her hair and lashes. 

Her wish came true, to some extent, when the Searchers came. 

In most major cities and towns, the Searchers are a ticket to prestige. They amount to a talent search agency, auditioning and testing Nevans of all ages for the chance to be selected as a Candidate. But in rural and developing areas, they have a more sinister reputation. Tales of young people who vanish in the night, magic-children simply ‘moving away’ without explanation. Sometimes a couple months pass and their families receive a handsome compensation, and a familiar name appears on the news in connection with a member of the Royal Family. Even out in the middle of nowhere, the House of Nikiforov carries weight.

Mila was discovered, her family informed she will be well-cared for. Having just passed her sixteenth birthday and thus at the right age to be trained as a Candidate instead of an adoptee, she watched as her mother signed the contract with trembling fingers. Her Bergian chased after her hovercraft as she was whisked away to Moyka hours after. 

For the first time after that, Mila found herself surrounded by other magic-children, some of which weren’t even children anymore. Young adults, determined and cutthroat in their posturing for an advantageous bond, filled the corridors of the palace she was assigned to. No longer was she exceptional – here, her explosions of temper were considered coarse, unrefined. She had to be taught how to rein in her emotions, how to direct her projections. All for the possibility of being selected by someone of the Royal House for a bondmate. 

On her eighteenth birthday, she caught the eye of Prince Alexei. He took her out of the compound – the first time she’d been in years since her arrival – for long dinners in cloud liners above the city, and longer walks along the Moyka River. For the first time since she arrived, Mila had a taste of the world at its highest echelons, had a glimpse into her future as a bondmate to a Royal Family member. 

And then her life changed again when she met Sara Crispino at a gala dinner on a cloud liner gliding between the planet and its rings. She didn’t care about the topic of the evening, nor did she care for most of the guests. Sara’s violet eyes beckoned to her, deep and mysterious like a nebula; the jewels in her hair twinkled like constellations in the night sky. 

“What brings you here?” she asked Sara as they watched the rings veer by, dust and ice particles glittering above the observation panes. 

“My brother and I are executives of Crispino Industries,” replied Sara. “I’m also his familial mediator.”

Mila remembered Michele Crispino. He’d stared suspiciously at Alexei and so many others in the room all night, hovering at his sister’s elbow like a overbearing Eterian defending its mates. Which, of course, would be a lot less creepy had they not been brother and sister. 

“A handsome rich young Alpha like him can’t find his own mediatorship?” she asked lightly. Sara sighed. 

“He is very… attached,” she admitted. 

Mila hummed into her glass of Moykavino. Alexei never let her have more than a finger, fearing the consequences of more. “Tell him to grow up,” she suggested.

She could see Sara hiding a smile behind her own glass as they drank to that. 

One drink turned to more, turned to Sara dangling across her shoulder on the pressurised terrace, laughing and twirling her along to the music. “You know what I’ve always wanted to do?” wondered the Beta, nuzzling against Mila’s collar. Mila shivered at the point of contact, feeling the same swoops in her stomach that the Beta must be experiencing. “Be a companion. Go out to the stars, forging my own way. Finding my own mediatorship, in the arms of other beings.”

“You’re allowed to do that?” wondered Mila. 

“Form mediatorships with other species? Absolutely. They just passed a law on Allegria… it was such a big victory for the Love Wins advocates…” 

“Yeah but – go to the stars as a companion? I thought that was only something Terrans did.”

“Nevans and Allegrians can do it, too!” Sara’s eyes shone like a supernova, and Mila felt her own heart expand just as fast. “You just need the paperwork filed, you need to take some certification courses accredited by the ICU… and then you get contracted to a crew, destination anywhere in the galaxy.” She paused. “Mila, let’s do it together. Let’s ditch all these people… and just go to the stars. Together.”

And Mila couldn’t say no to that. Maybe it was the Moykavino, maybe it was Sara’s own intoxicating presence, the sweetness of her voice, the earnestness of her enthusiasm. Maybe it was the way the world felt both fuzzy and clear, like standing in the eye of a storm and trusting it wouldn’t hurt her.

She had no idea how it happened. One moment she was merely dancing with Sara, and the next their fingers and foreheads were meeting. The Beta’s presence seemed to surround her, the scent of her perfume overwhelming Mila’s heightened senses. She was floating, she was falling, drifting away to new heights and into the depths of some great intangible thing from which she never wished to resurface.

And then the guards were pulling her away, Alexei’s stricken expression hovering moon-like in the back of the clamouring crowd. Even after being torn from the party and forcibly escorted back to the compound, Mila could still feel the ghost of Sara’s fingers and mind against hers. 

“I should be angry with you,” Alexei told her the next time they met. Over a table at the compound, the walls slate grey and drab. The table was metal, prison-like. Outside, the Bitterfrost winds blew. There would be no skating on the waterfall now. 

Mila peered out at him from behind her curls. “Are you?”

He shook his head. “You’re the only one of this lot who has any real spark,” he replied. “You remind me of a Terran I encountered once.”

Mila tilted her head. “A companion?”

Alexei nodded. “I will never see her again,” he lamented, and bowed his head. Mila held out her fingers, and he pressed the tips of his to them for a moment, before sighing. 

“I cannot give you a pardon,” he began, “but I will also try my best to delay their pursuit. I can lead them, as the Terrans say, on a merry chase. But I will need your help.”

Mila felt that same unspeakable warmth well deep inside her at that. “Thank you,” she said, meaning every word. “What will you need?”

“An attack.” He smiled. “I know you’re capable of vicious mental lashing. I’ve seen you put less fortunate sparring partners in the infirmary without even touching them. Make it look like you’ve attacked me, then take my ring. It will give you access to any ship in the Fleet that you need. Just don’t steal something noticeable.” 

“Why are you doing this for me?” asked Mila quietly, leaning closer to him. The prince sighed. 

“Because I sensed it, your connection to her,” he said quietly. “Very few Nevans ever experience such clarity, even with the ones they choose to bond with. When you meet someone who can make your world fall away with just a breath, well… there’s no chance for anyone else.” He gently squeezed her hand. “Find her again. The path of your star collided with hers for a reason.”

Mila kissed him, briefly. And then she closed her eyes, and knocked him out. 

It would take the Nevan Police days to hear of her attacking her intended and stealing his ring to access a ship. It would take them weeks to find the missing starship, and months to track its jump signatures. But just before the Searchers could set out to retrieve her, someone hacked into the database and completely erased all traces of the Firebird. 

Over the slumbering form of her brother, Sara Crispino, too, rushed to freedom in the stars. With Mila at her side, the two of them knit together a crew – a family – of rag-tag beings looking for adventure or escaping dire circumstances at home. They picked up a young talented Omega Allegrian medical student whose brains were being wasted in a dusty lab archiving old slides. They picked up a hitchhiking Nevan engineer who had memorised the entire schematics of every type of starship in the Federation. They picked up an Allegrian ambassador’s Alpha son, who had grown bored with life on Allegria and was looking for a change of pace. 

And they picked up two Terran companions. Inseparable, contracted friends who would die for one another, and the rest of the crew, too. It had always been nothing short of a miracle that they hadn’t managed to do so before, but as Mila watches the screen go blank on the bridge of the Firebird, she couldn’t help but feel that same deep, unspeakable warmth suddenly, unexpectedly turn to ice. 

“Yuuri!” she screams, as if that would make him more likely to respond. Next to her, Prince Viktor crumples to the floor, his breath rushing out of him in a wordless cry of anguish. Phichit catches him just before he hits the floor, but the prince tears out of his arms, rushing towards the door. 

Mila had once been taught of the great Bond that superseded all bonds, the web that tangled together the minds of all beings. She had never quite believed in such a thing before, but now she pleads with it, begs with whatever celestial Beyond that could possibly exist for the chance that Yuuri – and Yura, and the other crewmembers – had survived. Shakily, she, too, rises to her feet, striding out of the bridge towards the aft, towards the hatch where the boarding seal had been. She can sense her wife tagging along a couple paces behind, wary but supportive. 

The first thing she sees, as she draws closer to the corridor, is that the engineers in the area had put a stasis field over the gaping hole in the side of the ship where the explosion had torn away the boarding seal and a chunk of the hatch.

The second thing she sees is four forms being rushed towards sickbay by Dr Minami.

“Your Highness, no, get out of the way! Out of my way!” screams the young Omega, bodily shoving Viktor back as the medibots vanished down the hall with the gurneys. “If you’re not on my medical team, I want you all fifty standard meters away from my sickbay, so help me. I will hurt you if you don’t comply.”

“Is he all right? Will Yuuri be all right?”

“They’ll both be fine, whichever one you’re talking about,” snaps Dr Minami, visibly irritated. “And in case anyone cared, so will the other crewmembers. They got knocked back by the explosion, but they were luckily closer to us than to the Almavivo.”

Mila bends down, picks up a set of twisted and broken glasses. Emil swipes it from her fingers, placing it in a small baggie.

“I’ll get to work on that,” he says, before nodding and shuffling back to the aft. Dr Minami does a Terran gesture, making a V with his fingers and pointing from his eyes to Viktor, before rushing off after his medibots. Mila sighs, nodding at Viktor. 

“They’ll be fine,” she says. “Don’t worry.”

Viktor nods, looking down at the floor of the ship. “I think I owe you a pardon,” he says.

And hours later, with Sara on her arm, Mila watches Viktor sit by Yuuri’s bedside, entwining their fingers as he reads the Terran something from a touchpad. Yuuri’s vitals are steady on the board above his bed, and he’s laughing at something Viktor’s saying, his eyes never leaving the prince’s. 

“When you meet someone who can make your world fall away with just a breath, there’s no chance for anyone else,” she says quietly. Sara hums her question, and Mila sighs. “Just something Alexei said before he let me take his ship.”

“You’ve always said you knocked him out and stole it,” Sara remarks.

“I might have said that to impress you,” replies Mila, feeling her cheeks heat up. “But what we have – what they have – that’s not something that happens often. Their stars collided for a reason.”

“Like ours?” wonders Sara, entwining their fingers. Mila nods. 

“I hope they realise that something like this doesn’t happen every day.” Leaning over, she kisses her wife, their breaths mingling as their minds meet. “And they’ll be happier if they follow the path that will lead them back to one another.”

Sara nods, too, her eyes bright as they pull back. Even after all this time, Mila can still see nebulae in them, can still find them brighter than starlight. 

“Let’s leave them to it,” she suggests, and Sara grins as she tugs her wife towards their quarters.