Chapter Text
Elio woke up, and didn’t know where he was. He blinked, the white lights overhead burning his eyes. He was laying on something hard and cold, curled against something soft and warm. He wriggled closer to the warmth, and closed his eyes, and—
“Elio,” said Mama, behind him.
With a jolt, he sat up. The cold was the metal floor of the shuttle, and the warm was Luan, already awake and staring at Elio with big brown eyes. The shuttle’s hatch was open. Though the hatch and the porthole he could see the smooth grey walls of a hangar.
When he turned his head Mama was standing next to the pilot’s chair, one hand braced against the back, and the skirt of her white robe was red.
“Elio,” she said again, low, carefully controlled. “I need you to go and find an adult. A dockworker. Someone in a uniform. Tell them to call for a doctor.”
“Mama—”
“Go,” she snapped, and that scared Elio even more than the red. “Go now!”
He was on his feet and halfway out the hatch before he realized he was still holding Luan’s arm. He tried to let go but he couldn’t, and then something thumped behind him, and Mama groaned, and he was so scared he dragged Luan behind him all the way through the hatch and across the grey hangar floor. Luan didn’t cry or scream or fight, like he had when—like he had, he let himself be dragged. That scared Elio too.
The hangar was almost empty, only two other shuttles at the far end, but there were people in grey and blue uniforms running fuel lines to them, and one very tall uniformed man with a frown and a folder walking towards their shuttle. He stopped when he saw Elio, and then picked up his pace.
Before the man even reached them Elio’s mouth opened and he screamed. The force of the scream leaving his body scared him so badly he screamed again, and once he started he couldn’t stop. He felt hot tears on his face, his feet stopped moving, Luan’s arm trembled in his grip.
The man was running now. He fell to his knees in front of Elio, dropping his folder on the ground with a flutter and splat. “Hey little guy, hey.” His hands hovered close to Elio’s face, his eyes creased. “Hey, what’s the matter, what’s wrong?”
Somewhere in the screaming he managed to take a breath, managed to force out, “My Mama! My Mama, you have to help my Mama!”
“Your Mama?” He glanced over Elio’s shoulder to their shuttle. “She still in there?”
“She’s bleeding! She said—You have to get a doctor! You have to help!”
The man said a very bad word, very quietly. He scooped Elio up in one arm and Luan in the other, forcing Elio to let go of Luan’s arm. He didn’t run to the shuttle but he moved so fast Elio had to stop screaming and focus on holding tight to his grey collar.
He set them down outside the hatch and stepped inside, reaching for the radio at his belt. Elio scrubbed at his face, and breathed, and scrubbed at his face some more until it hurt, and then Luan grabbed his sleeve and pressed his face into Elio’s chest with a whine.
The surprise of that, of Luan hiding, made it easy to not pay attention to the hurt, and to pay attention to what was happening in the hangar. He looked over the top of Luan’s head and saw a whole big crowd of people in white uniforms running towards the shuttle.
*
He didn’t remember the trip to the hospital, he didn’t really pay attention to anything besides holding onto Luan and letting Luan hold onto him until Hector arrived.
Hector stepped into the ugly white waiting room, and Elio threw himself at his legs. Hector caught him just before collision and swung him up into a hug so tight he couldn’t breath. Elio didn’t mind. The waiting room smelled like blood and burning metal but Hector smelled like groundcars; grease and rust and old rubber. Elio wanted Hector to hold him forever and never ever put him down.
Hector said something, stroking his back, but Elio wasn’t paying attention. He tucked his face into Hector’s scruffy neck and breathed. Hector shifted him a bit, Elio felt him walk farther into the room.
“And you must be Luan,” Hector said, and he set Elio down and knelt on the floor.
“I’m Hector.” He held a hand out to Luan, eyes soft, but expectant. “You’re going to come home with Elio and I, if that’s alright with you.”
Luan didn’t say anything, he didn’t even nod, only stared at Hector while Hector studied him. Even in his own surprise at being so quickly set aside, Elio realized Hector wasn’t surprised. Hector wasn’t surprised by Luan at all.
*
“Mama’s alright?” Elio asked again.
“She will be,” Hector insisted, but he was frowning, and pushing his rice around his plate without eating it, even though he kept telling Elio and Luan to stop playing with their food.
“And baby Mari’s alright too?”
“She’s doing just as well as Mama.”
“Mama’s not bleeding anymore?”
“The doctors are taking good care of her.”
It was only the three of them at the small wooden table in the corner of the kitchen. Mama didn’t usually let him eat in the kitchen, but Hector thought that was a silly rule, and had told Elio it was silly a long time ago.
Instead of letting him stay at the hospital with Mama, Hector had piled Elio and Luan too into the back of his hovercar and taken them out of the city and home, to the great round stone house in the forest Elio’s grandpapa had built all by himself. Hector hadn’t even suggested the great round stone dinning hall. Just carried Luan down the back steps into the kitchen, Elio trailing behind. M. Moreno wasn’t there, but she had left sweetrice and fruit on the counter.
The kitchen was always so clean, and had so many windows, and was full of spices and smells that made him sneeze and also M. Moreno, and so Elio loved it. But tonight the grey stone walls felt too far apart, the grey stone floor too loud. All he could see out the high windows was dark; a thick black void kind of dark.
Elio took a bite of rice and swallowed without chewing. “Can we see Mama tomorrow?”
Hector sighed. He shoved his plate away and stood. “Are you two done eating?”
Elio nodded, jumping down from the bench. Luan didn’t move until Hector picked him up. Elio frowned, remembering the way Luan had fought him in the shuttle. Now he was all limp and Elio didn’t know why.
Hector carried Luan up the stairs and Elio followed, the tufts of pale-bright hair peaking over the shoulder of Hector’s stained work jacket making something in his stomach squirm.
The house only had three floors, the kitchen built into the ground and the playroom built into the roof and then the rest of the house in between, round rooms spiraling out from the dinning hall all across the clearing in the forest. Hector carried Luan all the way through the curving halls to Elio’s room, the last room, the one closest to the cherry grove and to the edge of the forest.
His bed had been made up while he was gone, blue and green and purple pattered blankets folded neatly. The blocks he’d left on the floor had been put back into their chest. Sometimes that happened, when Mama got tired of trying to make him clean and just let M. Moreno do it, but in the space on the rug where he usually played and where he’d left a whole block city to come back to, was a second bed.
It wasn’t a real bed, it was a cot like the kind Hector had in his workshop for when he and Mama went camping, but Hector set Luan down on it and it suddenly became very clear to Elio that when Hector had said Luan was coming home with them, he meant Luan was coming home to stay. Maybe forever. Maybe even forever in Elio’s room.
“Elio?” Hector called, not looking at Elio and instead looking at the lump that was Luan sitting on the plain white blankets of the cot. “Can you find something for Luan to sleep in?”
Elio scowled. “Where?”
“In your cloths chest. Just one of your own sleeping tunics.”
“No.”
Hector glanced over his shoulder, brow creased. “Excuse me?”
Mama only said ‘excuse me’ when she wanted you to change what you said, but sometimes Hector said ‘excuse me’ when he really hadn’t heard what you said in the first place, so Elio took a deep breath and said, “No,” louder than before.
Luan was looking at him, sort of, from around Hector’s middle. Brown eyes and no eyebrows. He wasn’t even looking at Elio, just… looking, vaguely, into the room. He was very silly and very stupid, Elio decided, and Elio wanted him to go be silly and stupid somewhere else that was not in his bedroom with his Hector.
Hector opened his mouth, and then closed it. He stood and walked to Elio’s clothes chest, ignoring the whine of displeasure Elio couldn’t quiet, and took out two tunics. He handed the nicer one to Elio, and took the stained one over to Luan, and sat next to him on the cot and started to slowly untangle him from his tiny black suit.
Elio wanted to scream. But he remembered the way it had hurt, the screaming, so instead he threw his tunic on the ground and threw himself flat on his back on his own bed and tried to pretend he wasn’t crying again.
He listened to the rustle of cloth as Hector got Luan changed; the muffled thump of boots on the rug and the crinkle of fresh sheets being tugged around. Hector spoke softly to Luan the whole time, too soft for Elio to hear.
Finally, the boots thumped across the room to Elio’s bed. He crossed his arms tight over his chest and glared up at the ceiling. When Hector’s dark, hairy face came into view, he wasn’t glaring back. He looked very very tired and very very sad. Elio’s stomach squirmed again.
Hector helped him sit up and wiped his face without saying anything, and helped him change out of his own dirty clothes and into the tunic. He hadn’t realized how sore his body was until now. He ached all over from sleeping on the shuttle floor.
And then Hector picked him up and carried him to the door.
“No!” He tried to throw himself out of Hector’s arms and back onto his bed, but the bed was too far and Hector was too strong. “No! It’s my room! It’s not Luan’s, it’s mine! I want to sleep in my room!”
“I know, I know Elito.” Hector smoothed a hand up and down his back, and Elio felt the tears start again like they’d never stopped. “You’re going to sleep in your room, in your bed, but I think we need to have a conversation first.”
As they passed through the doorway, over Hector’s shoulder Elio saw Luan laying very still in the cot.
Hector took Elio out into the hall, and sat down across from the open door and settled Elio in his lap. “Alright, Elito. What did your mother tell you about Luan?”
Elio curled in on himself, aching, his face pressed against Hector’s chest. “Nothing.”
“Nothing?”
Elio’s throat closed up, remembering how heavy Luan had been in his arms. “She said I had to take care of him until we got home safe.”
They were home. Probably they were safe. Probably it wasn’t his job to take care of Luan anymore.
Hector muttered something under his breath that sounded a lot like ‘mi vida’ and ‘secrets’ and some other words Elio was not supposed to know. “Alright,” he said, out loud. “Alright, alright.” He settled back against the wall and sighed.
They sat in silence, and Hector kept smoothing his hand up and down Elio’s back, and he was warm and still smelled like old rubber and Elio was home, even if he wasn’t in his room Elio was home, and the relief of that and of Hector’s hand on his back almost sent him to sleep.
“Do you remember the conversation we had,” Hector asked, startling Elio out of his doze, “when I married your mama?”
Elio nose scrunch against the rough weave of the Hector’s work jacket as he tried to think that far back. It had been… a long time ago. A year ago? More than a year ago. He’d had lots of conversations with Hector before the wedding about lots of different things. Slowly, he shook his head.
Hector hummed and patted his hair. “The one about if you wanted me to be your papa.”
“Oh. I remember that one. I guess.” He mostly remembered being confused as to why marrying his mama made Hector his papa, until Hector had explained that it didn’t.
“I married your mama, so I’m your mother’s husband, but I’m not your papa unless you decide I am,” Hector said. “It’s the same with Luan. He’s going to live with us now. Tomorrow we’ll set up a bedroom for him, find him his own clothes and toys. I thought Candella would explain at least some of it to you. I’m sorry this is all happening at once.”
He’d been trying not to think about—about the cruiser. About all the people who had been on the cruiser. About M. Gomez, and the other Erdura delegates, and all the Orado delegates, and the servants and crew, and the man and the woman who had given Luan to Mama.
Given, not taken. They hadn’t been kidnapping Luan or anything like that, Luan had been given to Mama, to take care of and to bring home, even before—before.
Hector had known Luan was going to be coming home with them. Mama had know. Elio had not known, and he might be angry about that if he could be anything but exhausted.
“He’s going to be your mother’s son. My son,” Hector continued. “Just like you and Marisol are our children. He doesn’t have to be your brother, though. Not until you decide he is.”
Elio breathed, and breathed, and breathed.
He’d thought a lot about a little sister, once Mama had explained about baby Mari. He’d never thought about a little brother. For so long his life had been him and Mama. Hector had come into it very slowly, and so had baby Mari. Luan was almost as sudden and horrible as the explosion.
He freed his face from Hector’s jacket, looking up at him with a frown. “I get to decide?”
“You get to decide.” Hector sounded so certain, the squirming inside Elio eased.
“Be kind to him,” said Hector, gentle. “To take care of him when your mama and I can’t. Can you do that for me, Elito?”
“I guess so. He’s a baby still.”
“Not quite a baby, but he’s a few years younger than you, yes.”
“He can’t even talk yet!”
The hand on Elio’s back stilled, and then resumed it’s path up and down Elio’s spine. “He can talk, but it might be hard for him, for a time. You need to be patient.”
Elio shrugged, and tipped forward to hide against Hector.
Hector held him for a little longer, and then sighed, and stood, and carried Elio to his bed, and tucked him under his blankets as carefully as he had every other night he’d put Elio to bed.
“I’m going to stay until you’re asleep,” he said, dialing down the lights, “but then I have to go back to the hospital. M. Moreno is staying overnight. If you wake up and you need her, she’s in the guest room down the hall.”
Elio nodded into his pillow, and Hector sat at the foot of his bed and put his head into his hands.
Across the room, Luan’s eyes sparked in the light from the hall.
*
Elio woke up, and for a moment he was drifting in space, the darkness so complete and so suffocating he couldn’t breath.
“Papa?” said a small voice in the dark.
Luan. Luan, in the cot across the room.
Elio breathed in. Breathed out. He was too warm to be in space. Space was cold and empty and he was under his blankets in his bed in his house.
He lay still in the dark and breathed, and listen to Luan breathing. There was a tiny bit of silver light seeping into the room from under the curtains, making the white blanket on the cot glow like a star.
“Papa?” Luan said again, louder. “Papa? Papa?”
Elio sat up.
“Papa!”
Elio climbed out of his bed and stood beside it, uncertain.
Luan wailed, loud and high and terrified. Elio jumped with the shock of it, such a big sound coming from such a tiny body. It made him shiver, made his throat close up.
“Papa!” Luan cried. “Want Papa! I want Papa! Papa!”
Elio stumbled across the room to the cot, heart beating so hard it hurt.
Luan was laying in the very middle, not moving at all except for the way his chest rose and fell with his sobs under the silver shadow of the blanket.
“Don't cry!” said Elio, leaning against the cot so it dug into his stomach, leaning in as far as he could, reaching so his underarm ached to pat the silver-pale head on the silver-white pillow. “Don't cry. Hush. Don't cry.” Mama had told him he had to be gentle when he patted a baby’s head, and maybe Luan wasn’t a baby but Elio thought Hector would want him to be gentle.
He stayed like that for a bit, but it was too far to reach comfortably. With a grunt, he heaved himself up onto the cot and knelt beside the lump that was Luan. “It’s alright, Luan. Don’t cry.”
Luan’s crying quieted enough for him to ask again, choked and damp, “My Papa?”
Elio didn’t know where Luan’s papa was. Maybe on the other side of the moon, on Orado. Maybe somewhere on Erdura. Maybe floating in space.
Elio shook his head, shook that thought away. “Hector’s going to be your papa now,” he said, firm. “He’s pretty good at it, I guess.”
Luan started crying again.
Maybe Elio should go get M. Moreno.
But he didn’t want to leave Luan alone, in the dark without his papa. After a moment of hesitation, looking between the black void of the door and the shadow of his maybe-brother curled up in the middle of the empty cot, he crawled up to the pillow and pulled aside the blanket and squirmed his way down into the warm hollow next to Luan.
Luan didn’t stop crying, but he was quieter now, so Elio hugged him as best he could and told him over and over and over that everything was alright.