Chapter Text
Elio caught a glimpse of the starcruiser through a porthole as the shuttle slowed for docking. The ship hung heavy and silver in space, exactly like a real star. Or a bullet, maybe. He’d seen one in the museum and they were sort of the same shape. Even at a distance the whole cruiser was ten times as big as the parliament building, which was a pretty big building, even bigger than the museum. It was was so still it almost looked like a picture, except for the shuttles and skiffs and barges flying around it. Like birds swooping in and out of the cherry tree by the back steps.
The shuttle drew closer and closer until the cruiser took up the whole porthole, a solid silver mass, and finally the silver became black became bright white lights as they docked in the hangar.
Mama helped him out of his safety harness and cushioned seat. She’d already put on her fancy parliament robes--soft white folds draped over her shoulders and over the bump that was baby Mari and all the way to the floor, her black hair twisted up on top of her head with red beads. She smiled at him, a flash of white teeth behind red-painted lips. He felt himself smile back, and took her hand, and followed Mama onto the starcruiser.
*
Their rooms on the cruiser were smaller than the rooms at home, because it was a spaceship, and Elio had to sleep with Mama because there were only two bedrooms and M. Gomez got her own because it was also going to be her office. He didn’t mind. Sometimes when he had a bad dream he slept with Mama anyway, and now Hector too.
They didn’t do anything that first night except sleep, but Mama woke him early the next morning to get ready. She was going to have to wear her robes every day for the whole three weeks, but she’d brought all sorts of jewelry. She put gold beads in her hair, and some gold beads in his too, and when they arrived at the big silver room where the first meeting was supposed to be, all the white-robed delegates patted his head and pinched his cheek and said he looked just like her, and that he would grow up to be a brilliant politician, and that he was a perfect little mascot for Erdura.
None of the other delegates had brought their kids, not even the Orado ones. That meant there was nobody to play with, but it also meant after the meeting was over, instead of pestering her about politics the Orado delegates pestered Mama about Elio and the Erdura delegates pestered her about when she was going to stop working to have baby Mari.
Hector had asked Mama to let Elio stay home, but Elio was pretty sure this attention was why Mama had insisted he come.
After dinner Mama lay down on the stiff couch with her feet up and cuddled him. Elio was happy to be a distraction, for the delegates but especially for Mama.
*
Every day was meetings. Big morning meetings in the big silver room and small afternoon meetings in small bright painted rooms and then fancy dinners in a white and black tiled room that still sort of felt like meetings. Elio didn’t mind sitting in the back with M. Gomez and the other secretaries while Mama had her meetings, but after the first day he did understand why Hector had asked Mama to let him stay home.
Still, the morning meetings weren’t that different from parliament, and Mama took him all the time to parliament. Or, maybe not all the time, not after Hector, because when Mama was working but Hector wasn’t, Hector liked to take Elio to the museum or the park or the pier. But Elio had been to parliament a lot. He knew how to sit still and play quietly with his starships.
M. Gomez was busy taking notes, bringing Mama the papers she wanted and whisper-reminding her of things, but she kept crackers in her briefcase, and he could have as many as he wanted as long as he was careful not to get crumbs all over.
*
At first the meetings were very polite. Scared polite. Nobody wanted to make anybody mad, he could tell. Mama had taught him how to tell, and during the first three days of meetings even Mama was scared.
In the silver room everybody sat very straight in dark wood chairs around a dark wood table with piles of paper and glasses of water that sparkled in the yellow light and talked, polite, and nodded and listened and took notes or double checked their secretaries’ notes. Mama was at the head of the table and an Orado man in a black suit was at the foot, and they always started the talking.
The seventh day, the man in the black suit yelled at Mama.
Mama didn’t yell back, but Elio could tell from the way her jaw went tight she wanted to. Very badly. But Mama had told him that not yelling was the first rule of politics, and even if the man in the black suit broke the rule, Mama wasn’t going to.
The man calmed down, and apologized, and Mama acknowledged the apology with a nod and kept the meeting going, but that night after Elio was supposed to be asleep she stayed up late with M. Gomez, talking low and urgent in the sitting room.
*
There was a lot more yelling, after that.
*
The afternoon meetings were also supposed to be lunch, so everybody split up into whatever little blue or red or purple room they wanted to be in and ate bits and pieces off platters and pretended they were having fun talking to each other.
Elio was allowed to wander as long as he stayed in the same room as Mama. Most of the delegates wanted to say hello to him and tell him he was a sweet and well behaved little boy. He smiled and let them pinch his cheek, even the Orado delegates with their dangling black sleeves.
After the first few afternoons he started taking his starships to a corner once he’d eaten enough, not because he wanted to keep playing with them but because he was tired of cheek pinches. He thought Mama didn’t like the afternoon meetings either, because after the third day M. Gomez had started slipping her headache medicine.
*
On the fourteenth day, after all the platters had been cleared away, one of the Orado delegates sat down on the floor right next Elio as he was crashing a fighter into a cruiser, and said, “Hello, young man.”
Elio blinked at him.
The man smiled, soft, and it made the corners of his brown eyes crinkle up. “How are you enjoying the conference so far?” he asked, even though Elio hadn’t said hello back yet.
Elio smiled his best parliament smile. “It’s nice! I like being on a cruiser. The stars look different up close.”
The man nodded towards the fighters and cruiser and shuttles and barge he had scattered on the carpet. “An aspiring pilot, are you?”
“No.” He tugged his toys closer, in case the man tried to touch them. “These are the only ones that fit in M. Gomez’s briefcase.”
The man tipped his head back and laughed. “Rather limited in your options, hm?”
“I like blocks, but Mama says M. Gomez can’t carry a whole set or she’ll hurt her back.”
“Your mother is a wise woman, and a gracious employer.”
“Yeah! She’s wise, she’s in the parliament.” Elio sat back on his haunches, looking through the maze of chairs and table legs to where Mama sat talking with a woman in a black suit. “She’s over there, she’s got gold beads in her hair, see?”
“I see.” The man nodded solemnly, but he looked at Mama… fond.
When Elio glanced over to make sure he was looking at the right person, he found Mama looking back. She smiled at Elio, sad, and then turned that very same sad smile to the strange man.
Elio opened his mouth to ask some kind of question, but the man turned back to him and asked, “If not a pilot, may I ask after your plans for the future? Political aspirations, perhaps?”
He scowled, and then remembered he had to be polite and smoothed the scowl away. “I’m going to work at the museum,” he said, firm, because even if he liked parliament fine he didn’t like long meetings. “I’m going to be in charge of the groundcars. Polishing them and things.”
“Groundcars, hm? Do you have a favorite?”
So Elio told the man all about the antique groundcars in the museum and all the weird shapes of doors and wheel wells and hoods and how Hector was building one all by himself in his workshop and sometimes let Elio help, and when he remembered to check on Mama again she was smiling her own parliament smile and talking with two white-robed Erdura delegates.
The man stayed on the floor in the corner with Elio all through the afternoon. When everybody started leaving to get ready for dinner he stood with a creak and a groan, and shook Elio’s hand, and said, “It was my pleasure to make your acquaintance, Elio. I wish you the best of luck with your groundcars.”
*
Mama didn’t want to bring Elio to her meetings anymore, he could tell. She still did his hair with beads like hers but there was a wrinkle between her eyebrows when they left their rooms, and she squeezed his hand extra tight before she let go of him to go to her chair at the meeting table. He didn’t really want to go to the meetings anymore either, but he wasn’t allowed to stay in their rooms alone and M. Gomez couldn’t skip meetings to watch him. It was hard to focus on his ships though, so instead he sat still and quiet and watched.
The yelling was mostly over but now instead of polite-scared everybody was angry-scared, as rigid as their tall wood chairs. When it was her turn to talk Mama spoke in a low, sharp voice. Sometimes she would stand and pace, gesturing between the man glaring and growing slowly red at the foot of the table and the Erdura delegates who wouldn’t quite meet her eyes.
She hadn’t been trying to hide baby Mari before, but she had been hiding how much her back hurt, and her feet, and how often M. Gomez had to slip her headache medicine with her papers. Now she would rub her back or her side or pinch the bridge of her nose. Now it was like she wanted everybody to see.
*
The fancy dinners in the fancy white and black tiled room used to be Elio’s favorite, because even if they felt like meetings, he got to sit next to Mama and eat funny looking foods.
Mama stopped bringing him during the second week, and he had dinner in the sitting room with M. Gomez instead.
M. Gomez didn’t talk to him much. Or smile, ever. But, in the evenings when it was just the two of them eating she would take her hair out of its tight bun and shake it out over her shoulders with a sigh, and then ask him--in the same polite way she always asked Mama--if his day had been successful. He always said yes, because he couldn’t think of a reason to say no, and that was the closest M. Gomez ever got to smiling.
*
On the seventeenth day, after their dinner trays had been taken away by one of the servants in grey livery, Mama arrived back to their rooms with her jaw set and her eyes hard.
“Arela,” she called, ignoring Elio and his blocks, and M. Gomez came out of her bedroom-office twisting her hair back up, fast and neat.
“Is it time?” she asked, a pin in the corner of her mouth.
“It is time.”
M. Gomez hummed, and finished with her hair, and stepped right back inside her office.
“Time for what?” Elio asked, his city construction forgotten.
“Time for us to visit some friends,” she said, brisk.
“Friends?” Elio squinted at her, suspicious, but she was staring hard at M. Gomez’s door.
Mama had lots of friends, but they were all back on Erdura. She’s told him one of the rules of politics was to have friends who were not politicians. She was nice to everybody in parliament, but the only parliament person she ever invited to dinner was M. Nelada, and he hadn’t come to the conference.
M. Gomez came out with her briefcase and handed the whole thing to Mama. “I took the precaution of including two changes of clothes.” She glanced at Elio. “Your medicine and the boy’s things are there as well. I couldn’t pack anything like a meal, I’m afraid.”
“This will do fine.” Mama’s voice softened a bit. “Thank you, Arela. You have everything you need for tomorrow?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Good.” Mama finally turned to Elio, holding out her empty hand. “Ready, Elio?”
Reluctant, Elio stood and took her hand. She gripped it hard, and turned on her heel to lead him out the door.
He glanced over his shoulder just before the door slid shut, and saw M. Gomez standing in the middle of the room with her hands clasped at her waist, and the look she gave him was almost a smile.
*
Mama strode down the long, empty hall, Elio trotting to keep up. The main hallways were all panels of dark wood and polished silver. He tried to catch his reflection, but they were moving too fast.
The hall branched. Instead of turning in the direction of the meeting rooms, Mama pressed at one of the wall panels. It slid back. Elio startled. Mama didn’t so much as twitch, and pulled him along right into the wall. They didn’t slow down. Mama knew where she was going, and after a moment he realized where they were.
The servant and crew passages were the same dull steel and titanium of the bones of the cruiser. There was carpet so footsteps wouldn’t echo, same as the main halls, but it was dusty, and made Elio sneeze.
They walked without speaking for a few minutes and then Mama came to a halt, and knocked on the wall over Elio’s head. The panel slid to the side, and in the bright room behind it stood the man who’d asked him about groundcars.
“Candella!” he said, excited, and leaned right over Elio and hugged Mama tight.
Elio gaped, but Mama relaxed, hugging the man back and even leaning on him. He stroked a hand down her back and then let go, offering her a smile and an elbow. She let go of Elio to loop her arm through his with an answering smile, and the man helped her step over the lip of the door and into the room.
Elio followed, wary.
The room was small and square and empty, except for the woman Mama had been talking too when Elio had met the man. She was holding a kid. A little one, smaller than Elio, but not a baby. They were sleeping, fuzzy blond head resting on her black-clad shoulder.
The woman smiled at Mama and smiled at Elio, and Elio scowled at her because there was too much smiling happening for a meeting in a room in the wall.
He tugged at Mama’s robe and whispered, “How come we’re in the wall and not in the silver room?”
“Because we wanted to meet in here,” she whispered back. “This won’t take long, I promise.”
Elio didn’t think that was true, since M. Gomez had packed her briefcase for them, but before he could ask another question the woman said something too soft for Elio to hear. Mama said something back. She didn’t set the briefcase down and didn’t untangle her arm from the man’s, so Elio inched away to peer through the still open doorway.
Nobody in the hall. He sat down by the door and watched Mama and the strangers who were her friends talk, low. The woman was rubbing the kid’s back in circles.
Elio let his eyes wander. The glint of his mother’s gold necklace, the rumples around the waist of the woman’s black suit jacket, the man tapping his toe against the floor in a rhythm he couldn’t follow.
The man finally let go of his Mama, only to take the briefcase from her and slip a datachip inside it. He handed it back, and she took it with a nod, and then the man turned and looked right at Elio.
Elio blinked, but the man smiled--sort of small and sort of sad--and winked.
Elio blinked again, and looked away. When he glanced back the man was frowning, saying something to Mama. His toe still tapping, but faster now. Mama shook her head, and squeezed his arm.
The man stepped back and the woman stepped forward, and very carefully passed the sleeping kid to Mama.
The kid squirmed a bit, but the woman kept rubbing their back and after a few seconds they fell asleep against Mama’s shoulder. Elio watched her shoulders tense. She couldn’t carry him anymore, not with baby Mari in the way, but she was going to carry this kid even though her back already hurt.
The man leaned in and kissed Mama’s cheek, and the kid’s head, and then walked around her to come all the way over to Elio and kneel down on the dusty carpet in front of him.
“May I?” he asked, offering Elio his open hand.
Elio cautiously placed his hand into the man’s palm. It was cool and dry and the man didn’t try to squeeze it or shake it. Instead he pressed a very soft kiss to the back of Elio’s hand.
Before Elio could say anything Mama was there, brushing past the man and out of the room, briefcase swinging beside her and sleeping kid pressed against her chest. The man stood and gently gripped Elio’s shoulder, turned him around, and pushed him after her.
The door slid shut as soon as he was in the hall, and then Elio was almost running to catch up to Mama. She didn’t slow for him, only glanced back to make sure he was there. It took a few breathless twists and turns before he realized they were not going back to their rooms.
“Where are we going?” he asked, cold curling in his stomach.
“Home.”
“But we can’t go home yet! There’s meetings tomorrow!”
“Tomorrow I will be monstrously sick, and Arela will take notes for me.”
“But you’re not sick.”
“I will be.” Mama laughed, harsh. “I can feel a headache coming on right now.”
Elio didn’t ask anymore questions.
*
They didn’t go to the hangar they’d arrived in, they went to a smaller one. Only one tiny shuttle was docked, and no pilot, and no crew. Elio opened his mouth to ask where they were, but one look at Mama’s face stopped him.
She opened the hatch and groaned as she stooped to get inside. Elio followed, that cold in his stomach spreading through his whole body.
Inside the shuttle was all one open space, not split into cockpit and passenger seating. There was no co-pilot seat. There were no cushioned seats for kids, either. Or any seats, really. Just a bench along each side with some safety harnesses for adults. Mama set the briefcase down and pursed her lips. “Elio, take a seat.”
He climbed up on to the bench and sat, trying not to shiver. Very carefully, Mama knelt in front of him and adjusted her hold on the sleeping kid. Elio wondered if they were kidnapping him. One of Mama’s rules of politics was to never, never do something illegal, and he was pretty sure taking somebody’s kid home with you in secret was illegal.
“Remember when I showed you how to hold the doll, so you’d be ready to hold baby Mari?”
Elio nodded.
“Can you curve your arms like that for me, Spark?”
Elio curved his arms. Very gently, Mama placed the sleeping kid half in his arms and half in his lap. When she pulled her hands away Elio’s hold tightened.
“This is Luan,” Mama said, looking Elio right straight in the eyes. “I need you to take care of him until we’re safe home. Do you understand Elio?”
He scowled, stomach twisting, but he nodded.
Mama’s black eyes bored into his brown. “Say it.”
“I understand.”
“And?”
“I’ll take care of Luan until we’re safe home.”
“Thank you, Spark.” She stood, her face going tight and pinched like she’d tasted something sour. She breathed for a moment, studying the two of them, and then she kicked the briefcase under the bench and stumbled to the pilot’s chair.
Elio watched her get the engine started and then turned his attention to the warm bundle of blond hair and black clothes laying against him. Luan.
Luan’s cheeks were round and he didn’t have any eyebrows. He was heavy, but Elio was big, like Mama, and helped carry things in Hector’s workshop all the time. He wrapped his arms around Luan and held him firm against his chest.
The shuttle jolted, and Elio did too, and then they slipped through the narrow hanger doors and into space. There was a porthole right across from him. He counted stars and held tight to Luan and felt the warmth of another body chasing away his cold.
It wasn’t a long trip. They’d be home soon, and then Mama would be in a better mood because Hector would be there, and then Elio could ask his questions. This was a really important conference and Mama wouldn’t have left early without a good reason, and kidnapping was definitely not a good reason.
When they were far enough away, the shuttle rotated, and Elio could see the starcruiser they’d left behind floating peacefully in space. He breathed in, and breathed out.
The starcruiser exploded.
One second it was there, sleek and shining silver, and the next--a burst of red forced the ship apart from the inside. It shattered, like glass, into a thousand jagged pieces.
Mama screamed. The shuttle lurched as the force of the explosion reached them, debris like stars shooting past the porthole. Elio lurched too. He fell off the bench and hit the floor hard. Luan jolted, and wailed. Elio did not let go.
“Don’t look Elio!” Mama snapped. “Do not look! Close your eyes!”
Elio did not stop looking.
Luan cried and cried and cried, squirming and fighting, trying to get free of Elio's arms. Elio sat up and pressed Luan's face against his chest and snapped, “Don’t look!”
Luan did not stop crying, but Elio muffled most of into his jacket. “Don’t look,” he said again, and once he’d started he couldn’t stop. “Don’t look. Don’t look. Don’t look.”
The hum of an accelerating engine itched his bones. The shuttle rocked as Mama rotated it again. Something thudded against the metal side, ringing hollow.
Elio sat on the floor tangled with Luan and watched larger and larger hunks of metal hurtle past. He was cold again from the top of his head to the soles of his feet and he wanted to throw up. He wanted to cry. He wanted to scream.
He stared out the porthole and kept Luan’s face tucked against his chest and said, “Don’t look.”
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.
Chapter 3: Interlude
Chapter Text
There was a painting in his mama’s bedroom of a woman with a hand full of fire.
Black curls were flung across the top of the painting, red skirts swirled across the bottom. The woman’s dark skin and dark eyes gleamed in the flickering light.
In one upheld palm, a flame danced. Red, orange, gold. Fingers curled around it; contained it. The woman did not look at the fire, she looked out of the painting, right straight at Elio. He could not tell if she was smiling or sneering, but the set of her jaw was firm. Stubborn. A challenge.
He was never sure what the challenge was, or how to answer it, but whenever he wandered into the bedroom in search of Mama he found himself standing before the painting, meeting the burning woman’s burning gaze.
Chapter Text
Elio woke up with an elbow in his stomach. He blinked, head still on the pillow. Something dark and scratchy tickled his nose. He sneezed. It was early, not quite dawn, the light filtering through his curtains a gray-blue. Outside the open window cherry-pickers sang.
He tried to roll over, away from the elbow, and found he could not. There was a very warm and very knobby lump pressed against his back. He blinked again, and frowned. He sat up. He pushed the blankets back.
Luan and Mari grumbled as their sleep was disturbed, blinking back up at him, bleary and flushed and way too comfortable.
Elio sputtered.
He clambered over Mari and out of bed, careful not to knee her in the side even though she deserved it, for her stupidly sharp elbows. She whined and curled into the warm hollow he’d left. The stone floor stung cold against his bare feet.
The door was cracked open. He’d shut it firmly before going to bed last night. He’d debated putting a chest in front of it because he’d known they were going to do this, it happened every time, every year, and he’d wanted to be left alone. He should have gotten over himself and moved the chest.
He reached across Mari and shook Luan’s shoulder. Luan swatted his hand away. Elio grit his teeth and gripped his brother’s shoulders and hauled him over Mari and out of the bed.
Luan yelped as his own feet hit cold stone, stumbling, and if Elio let go of him he would fall and that would be about what he deserved, too.
He did not let go. He marched a yawning, unresisting Luan all the way to the door, out the door, and into the hall. When he stepped back inside his room Mari was sitting up, shoving tangled hair out of her eyes with the heel of her palm.
He pointed to the door. She scrambled out of the rumpled blankets and careened across the floor and into the hall and into Luan, who caught her with another yelp.
Elio slammed the door. He rested his head against the cool, solid wood and breathed. There was giggling from the other side, and then stomping feet, loud whispering.
Elio went back to bed.
***
Elio woke up to a loud bang. He jolted upright, breathing hard, blankets twisted around his arms. The banging continued.
“Hey, Elio!” Luan shouted from the other side of the rattling door. “Ma says you have to get up!”
He scowled at the door. “Go away!”
“Ma says we’re going to be late!”
“Stop hitting the door!”
The banging stopped. Elio breathed in, and held it, and breathed out slow.
The light was a pale gold now, illuminating his bed and clothes chest and old, creaking desk, making the bright patterned rugs and wall-hangings glow. The cherry-pickers were still singing, but distant, farther out in the grove. He groaned, and rolled out of bed. The stone was warmer, now, but the breeze tugging at his old tunic made him shiver.
“Elio?” came muffled through the door.
“I’m up!” He shuffled over to the clothes chest. “When is breakfast?”
“Pa says we can eat in the kitchen, in our sleep clothes if we want.”
He diverted from the clothes chest to the door. He should have expected the change in routine. White was no longer allowed in the dining hall, after Mari had managed to ruin a set of Ma’s parliament robes at a fancy dinner.
Luan was standing just beyond the door, so close that when Elio opened it and tried to step out into the hall he almost ran him over.
“What?” he snapped, halting his forward momentum by clutching the door frame.
Luan met Elio’s eyes squarely, face placid but jaw set. Stubborn and unapologetic. He was skinny, especially in comparison to Elio’s increasingly broad frame, but at barely thirteen he was already eye-level with Elio, and never let him forget it. He looked just like Ma when he set his jaw like that, and Elio kind of hated it.
“Are you mad?” he asked, even.
Elio sighed, slumping against the frame. “If I say yes, will you stay out of my room?”
“No.”
“Then no.” He pushed Luan back, gently, and eased out of his room, shutting the door behind him. “I’m not mad, just tired. Didn’t sleep much.”
Luan snorted. “I know.” He fell into step beside Elio as he started down the hall, their shoulders brushing.
Elio and Luan had both had nightmares when they were small. Their bedrooms were next to each other, so when one of them would wake up screaming the other would run to comfort them. Luan had grown out of them, Elio had… mostly grown out of them. They were only bad enough he couldn’t sleep the week before the memorial.
Even if they were knobby and annoying, he had slept some with his siblings beside him, which was better than not sleeping at all. “… Thank you,” he mumbled.
Luan grinned, sunshine bright, and slipped his hand into Elio’s and squeezed.
***
When they arrived Pa was serving Mari, or maybe supervising Mari serving herself, and Ma was sitting very still and staring into the space above her bowl. She came back to herself when Elio sat beside her, smiling at him and brushing hair out of his face. “Good morning, Spark.”
“Morning, Ma.”
She didn’t ask how he had slept.
The day of the memorial was always hard. Elio knew Senior Legislator Candella Ramona Ignici had very few regrets in her life, and the destruction of the Vuelo de Paz encompassed most of them.
“Are you ready?” she asked.
He shrugged.
M. Moreno had left rice, eggs, frijolo soup, and fruit on the table. He served himself and passed the food on to Luan. The family ate quickly and quietly. Usually Elio loved eating in the kitchen, it was warmer than the dinning hall and always smelled of spices and honey. Today the strong scents were suffocating. When he was done he carried his dishes to the sink without asking to be excused.
Pa was close behind him, with both his and Mari’s bowls. “We’re leaving in an hour, Elio.”
He waved acknowledgment and left.
***
Elio straightened blankets and laid his dress robes out over the bed. M. Moreno had washed and pressed the whole family’s white dress robes the day before, so the thick silk smelled of grass and sunlight and soap. He wanted to enjoy it.
He took his time washing up, using the water instead of the sonic. Luan could use the other bathing room in their hall. When he was clean and mostly dressed, he took his time at the mirror brushing his hair.
It was finally long enough to braid, four months into his sixteenth summer. The mass of thick, straight black hair still felt strange and heavy, hanging down the back of his neck and brushing his shoulders, but he was getting used to it. He liked being able to do things with his hair besides pin it out of his eyes. He liked being addressed as M. Ignici instead of S. Elio. He liked being able to wear long flowing robes like Ma. But for everything he liked about the appearance of adulthood, he still felt inside as he had at fifteen, at fourteen, his thirteen-year-old self only now starting to be distant.
Pa had laughed when he’d confided this, but kindly, and told Elio he was himself, and would always be himself, and did not stop being himself because he was also an adult. Elio had been annoyed by that at the time, but as the months had passed it had started to sound true.
The door creaked. He glanced over his shoulder and found a tiny dark head peeking through the gap.
He groaned. “Mari…”
“Please?” She slipped inside, eyes wide and falsely innocent. “I want to watch.”
“I’m not doing anything interesting,” he protested, but he picked her up and sat her on the counter and went back to his hair, remembering sitting quietly in the corner of Ma’s dressing room as she worked oil through knee-length curls.
He didn’t have to oil his, not yet, but Ma had given him some of her own when his hair started getting past his ears. He liked the cinnamon scent of it, so he rubbed a bit into the ends.
“Can I have some?” Mari asked, hopeful.
He gave Mari a critical once-over. She was dressed, and she looked very sweet, the hems of her white tunic and pants embroidered with cherry blossoms, but she must have escaped Ma or Pa or whoever had dressed her before they were done.
Elio set the oil aside. “Hold still,” he said, and wet a comb from the basin, and worked out the snarls in Mari’s close-cropped curls as gently as he could. Apparently not gently enough, because she whined and squirmed the whole time. She did hold still as he ran cinnamon-oiled fingers through those same curls, smoothing away the frizz and getting them to lay in some kind of order.
Mari giggled when he was done, inspecting herself in the mirror. Elio smiled as he braided his own hair, tying it off with a white ribbon.
“What do you think, Marita?” he asked, leaning against the counter and poking her in the side. “Are we pretty enough to be seen in public?”
Her nose wrinkled, but she nodded, and gave him a very firm, “Yes.”
“Marisol!” echoed from down the hall. “Marisol, where are you?”
Mari wriggled off the counter and shoved the door open. “Ma! Look, Elio did my hair!”
Ma slowed to a halt just outside the bathing room, regarding Mari with a faint smile. She had a comb in her hand. “He did a very good job.” She looked over Mari’s head to Elio. “M. Ferra is out front, are you ready?”
He swallowed, and nodded. Ma set the comb on the counter. “Mari, go find your shoes.”
Mari darted off down the hall, bare feet pattering against the stone, and Ma shut the door softly behind her. She pulled Elio into her arms just as his throat started to burn.
He didn’t cry, but he trembled, the burning spreading through his body, and Mama rubbed circles into his back and didn’t say anything.
When he pulled away Ma took his face in her hands. She wasn’t distant like she’d been earlier. Her eyes were sharp and her face was painted to hide her exhaustion, her jaw set, stubborn. “Two hours,” she said. “Two hours, and then it is done for another year.”
“I know.”
She kissed his cheek. “Thank you for doing Mari’s hair. Get your things and get outside.”
***
Elio collected his ‘pad, to read or sketch on the short flight into the city, and dragged his feet through the many winding halls down to the front entrance and the drive. Ma and Pa were waiting outside with Mari. M. Ferra already had the hovercar running. It was the nice one Ma used, small and sleek, only seating for six in the back, the silver paint shining in the sun.
At least he was not the last to arrive. Luan came running down out the double doors behind him and almost tripped over his sandals.
“Alright, alright.” Pa steadied Luan with a hand on his shoulder. He was wearing robes for once, his hair braided neatly, and the red embroidery around the collar matched Ma’s hairbeads. He made a show of counting heads. “Marita, Luito, Elito. Mi vida. And me. We’re all here.” He clapped his hands. “Let’s go, let’s go.”
They piled into the hovercar, Elio and Luan claiming window seats and Mari grumbling as she wedged herself between them. Ma and Pa sat facing them. M. Ferra waved from behind the privacy glass and Elio and Luan and Mari dutifully waved back.
The liftoff always sent Elio’s stomach swooping, no matter how smoothly M. Ferra managed it. He breathed in, held it, and breathed out slow. Mari wiggled around, trying to get a view out his window, and elbowed him in the ribs. He elbowed her right back.
“Please, not this morning,” Pa said, strained. Elio glanced at him and the way he was gripping Ma’s hand too tight, and subsided. Pa preferred groundcars, even though they were so much slower. Or maybe because they were so much slower.
The flight passed in silence. Elio tried to sketch a single perfect curl of hair, but he couldn’t make himself focus on it, even with Mari humming encouragingly at the emerging image. All he could think about were the steps of the remembrance ceremony, running through them in his head over and over.
First the political stuff. Somebody would give a speech. This year was the tenth memorial, and so this year it was Ma. Ma would give a speech. Then a priest would lead Prayer for Sudden Death, Prayer for Violent Death, Prayer for Souls, and Prayer for Survivors. And then Elio and Ma together would read the list of names engraved on the memorial stone; a hundred and seventy-three in total.
And then it would be over. Then he could go home.
Elio did not want to attend the memorial. He did not have a choice. When he was younger he got away with standing beside Ma and looking solemn, but after his thirteenth summer Ma asked him to read with her. He could have said no, could have kept putting it off until sixteen, until it became an adult obligation. He did not.
Elio was one of two survivors. Four, counting Luan and Mari, but nobody ever did because Mari hadn’t been born until two days after and Luan hadn’t been on the official list of passengers and crew. So it was just Elio and Ma.
He wondered sometimes what Pa would have done if all four of them had died. The people who had lost someone had usually only lost someone, to lose a spouse and three children all at once… He wouldn’t have even known he’d lost Luan, was the worst part.
***
The remembrance was held in the square outside of Parliament, in front of the memorial stone. M. Ferra let them out behind Parliament, and they walked through the empty, echoing dark halls to the heavy wooden doors at the front. Servants in white drew the doors open slowly, and Ma stepped outside to a rising murmur in the crowd.
Luan hugged him, tight, and then Pa, and then Mari, and then Elio followed Ma outside, ignoring the burning in his chest.
The wide, red-stone square was all but invisible under the crush of people. Thousands, maybe. He would not be surprised if every single person in the city and surrounding towns had forced themselves into this square.
More than one priest attended, red robes standing out in the crowd of white and pale yellow, but the one who would be leading the prayers was standing by the memorial stone, speaking softly with Ma. He stepped around them to the stone.
The memorial stone was taller than Elio. It stood closest to Parliament of the line of memorial stones circling the square, a great white marble oval sunk into the ground, polished and gleaming, a hundred and seventy-three names scattered over its surface without any pattern he’d ever been able to find; like falling stars, or debris, stained a shimmering black.
He stepped up to the stone and ran a finger down it’s surface until he found the name Ma always read first—Arela Junia Gomez.
“Elio?”
He turned away from the stone to find Ma standing close at his shoulder, flowing white robes gleaming, hair twisted up on top of her head in perfect coils. She never looked anything less than regal in public, and especially not for this. “Are you ready?” she asked.
He breathed in, held it, and breathed out slow. “Yes.”
***
He could put faces to fewer and fewer names, only M. Gomez was clear, her hair up and that final, almost smile.
***
When they arrived home Elio had a headache, and all he wanted to do was lock himself in his room and sleep.
“We have a guest for lunch, Elio,” Ma called after him as he started down the hall. He mumbled something over his shoulder and picked up his pace.
He was all but running when he got to his room, and flopped onto the bed without bothering to change out of his formal robes. For a long time he lay still, and breathed.
A knock at the door.
“Go away!” He shoved his face into the pillow.
The door creaked open. “You alright?” Luan asked.
Elio did not bother to reply.
The door snicked shut. Luan crossed the floor quietly; he must have changed out of the formal tunic and fancy sandals. He sat on the edge of the bed and rubbed Elio’s back and didn’t say anything, and Elio was so grateful for the quiet and the touch he would have cried, if he could allow himself to cry today.
The door creaked open once again. Elio lifted his face enough to watch Mari shove one foot and her head inside. “Ma says you can’t skip lunch. And she says you have to meet our guest.”
Elio groaned and rubbed his face against the pillow. Luan asked, “Who is it?”
Mari squeezed enough of her shoulders through the gap to shrug. “Some lady. I don’t know. She’s got an accent. One of Ma’s friends.”
Probably a politician then. When meant Ma would expect Elio and Luan to be polite and ask questions about law and talk about their studies. They shared a grimace.
“Fine.” Elio heaved a sigh and heaved himself onto his feet. “Tell Ma we’re coming.”
His robes were wrinkled now, and he knew he should care, especially making a first impression, so he hung up the white set and put on a yellow set. Luan waited patiently with Mari, and when Elio was presentable the three of them set off for the dinning hall.
They entered before the food had been served, which was good. Pa hadn’t arrived yet. Ma was standing beside the circular, neatly set table and speaking to a woman in black. When they entered, the conversation cut off as Ma and the woman turned to face them.
Ma was not smiling. That was the first thing Elio noticed. Always she smiled when speaking to guests, both welcome and unwelcome, and she was not smiling.
The woman gasped, and Elio’s attention snapped to her just as she took a step forward, hand rising unconsciously, reaching for—
“Leo?” she said, gaze locked onto Luan.
Luan froze. Elio frowned, took a half step in front of his brother.
Ma laid a hand on the woman’s arm and gestured to Luan. There was a hard look in her eyes Elio had never seen before, and it sent cold curling in his stomach. “Lenora, this is Luan,” she said. “Luan, this is Lenora’mar, your aunt.”
Aunt.
Luan’s aunt.
Even through the deafening rush of blood in his ears, Elio could admit they looked similar. She was blond, but it was the same kind of blond Luan now-brown hair had been as a child, pale-gold and thin. She was skinny and tall, like Luan was skinny and tall. But there were hundreds of thousands of people who were blond, and skinny, and tall. That didn’t make any of them related to his little brother. Maybe this was some elaborate, political lie.
Luan’s face had gone totally, perfectly blank. He studied the woman who was supposedly his aunt while she studied him, revealing nothing.
“Candella,” the woman said, breathless, eyes wide with something that could be horror or hope. “What did you do?”