A Star Pierces the Darkness
Jan. 1st, 2024 10:52 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
seleniasTitle: A Star Pierces the Darkness
Fandom: V-A11 H-all-A: Cyberpunk Bartender Action
Characters/pairing: Sei/Stella
Rating: T
Word Count: 3559
Notes: Written for![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
yuletide . Happy holidays!
Fandom: V-A11 H-all-A: Cyberpunk Bartender Action
Characters/pairing: Sei/Stella
Rating: T
Word Count: 3559
Notes: Written for
yuletide . Happy holidays!-
“You shouldn’t come any closer,” Sei says. She wraps her hands around the trailing end of her bandage and while the smell of her healing skin and the nanos beneath make her nose wrinkle, Stella only rolls her eyes and trots into her space. The water in the kettle whistles and Stella flips the switch and up-hands the water into the wide basin of the sink. It’s one of the fancy, corporate designs that Sei has seen in every building, modular and gray, and mayhap it’s the same as what she’d seen in the bank, she reminds herself calmly that this is not there, and what associations she makes should not color this safe space Stella has given her.
She is out of the immediate danger and what remains is the sting of Stella’s hand across her unblemished cheek and the sting of tears Sei had hoped not to see. A long fall, some semblance of empty space squeezing at her and compelling her forward toward — toward Stella. Toward home.
Nothing else matters. If she repeats this truth to herself — however inconvenient it is — she will surely believe it in time. Sei knows that Stella would not steer her wrong — even if it brought her some joy to lead her by the hand and control what direction they marched — and even now, with her skin prickling and her nails leaving half moons in her palms, she is compelled to see it through.
Stella wrings the towel out and steam rises between her neatly manicured hands. They’re blood red this week and lovely.
“You have one good arm right now,” Stella says, mechanical eye whirling. Her curled hair trails over her shoulders and down the length of her back and spills forward as she bends. “You’ll allow me this. You need me right now.”
“I’m not incapable,” Sei mutters. She says this more for herself, Stella doesn’t need convincing.
“I know it,” she murmurs back. “You have a real crazy streak. Just this once, let me have my way?”
Despite all the technology and the way the patch peels off her old injury in careful pieces, the skin below is genuinely human and susceptible to pain. Sei thinks, even if Stella’s fingers dug into the tissue, nothing would hurt so much as the prospect of not having this.
And despite the careful, appropriate distance they’ve maintained all their lives, Sei still watches her from beneath the sweep of her lashes, and knows Stella has colored her world in a myriad of ways. There is relief in her touch, joy in her presence, and when Sei closes her eyes to shut it all out, a need to know she’s still there and tangible against her.
The immediacy of near death escapes her. She thinks they will return to how they’ve always been, mirror nanobytes of the other, connected through years and years of intimate knowing.
“Does it hurt?”
“Not much, as long as you’re careful.”
“It hurt a lot when I was a child.”
“I know. You cried for days.”
Stella’s breath and the smell of perfume waft across Sei’s nose. She breathes in deep. She counts her eyelashes, real, and the rise and fall of her chest, real.
Stella puts her hands on her to soothe her, but Sei’s heart picks up speed, racing, and she can put a name to the feeling now. It’s always been there, just under the surface, directing her since they were children. And this moment too will change some things but not others — Stella’s always been the foundation of her world and her need to help, and Sei starts to understand, slowly, as she starts to slip a fingernail under a bandage to reveal the damage beneath, that this might just be that for her too.
Nothing changes, but the world is sharper, more angular than Sei recalls, and it’s her body keeping her alive. Human instinct compels survival against all else and even with the nanos reducing the blow to her psyche the first few weeks still grate against her like gravel in a playground, but the company does not.
The stink of exhaust crawls in under her skin. Sei pauses on the street, wipes her nose on the back of her hand, and resumes her clipped pace. Night edges in against the bruising skyline and clouds high above painted with the neon lights of the city make for a fake halo. Sei knows that there’s real darkness here, just as there’s real people beneath the parts of their choosing or chosen for them at birth. Paths laid before anyone was old enough to know whether it was a direction they wanted to walk. White Knights saw this darkness and meant to pull back the curtain upon it — for a long time, Sei had believed she managed to do some good. Now, it’s all in the air.
Beside her, Stella rubs her gloved hands together. She’s done up in rogue and blush and glittering eyeshadow and beside Sei’s tense figure she looks small and soft. But she’s not soft, not charitable, and her grip on Sei’s arm when she wanders too close to the steep drop at the edge of the road — where a freak sinkhole had taken hold of this quarter and swallowed an old apartment building and smoke and fire had called her to action once upon a time — reminds her clearly. Behind them, the clomp of Buster’s peg leg and his real, heavy foot keep a steady pace with them. His distance means he still trusts Sei — or he trusts Stella to yank her back from true danger, and she doesn’t know which is worse.
“Did I scare you?” Sei blurts out. Stella pulls her further toward the street in answer, away from the yawning abyss below, and they walk in sync, arm in arm. Carolers stream by across the street, a gaggle of girls lit up with lights and fake fur and hats. All around the holiday season is taking hold, but it’s mostly indistinguishable from the colors Glitch City already boasts.
“You’re too comfortable with danger,” Stella says. “Are your inhibitors in need of updating?”
Sei shrugs her shoulders, then winces as it disturbs her sling. “They’re working fine, as far as I know. They’re checked frequently, but it’s not like there’s someone I can easily access. My doc went underground to avoid the hunt. I should wait before I try to find her.”
Stella shakes her head. “You’re not a Knight anymore. Walk like me, a perfectly normal civilian. And you can see my doctor. I certainly pay her enough to keep her trap shut.”
“That’s very manipulative.”
“It’s called client confidentiality,” Stella sighs. “Besides, what’s the point of this if you’re left to suffer,” she mutters. Her agitation simmers beneath the surface but makes her face grow hot.
Sei thinks of what she can say to that. Stella has never been ordinary. Her friendship, her camaraderie, have all been special, luxurious treats. But she’s never lorded it over her or directed her away from danger, simply wished her well in her endeavors and pried out the worst incidents with a drink and food and good company. It is, Sei knows, an unshakable bond that allows them this.
She grips Stella’s arm tighter and lets her pull her across the street where signs wash her hair from orange to green, stained by the glow and ambiance of a city that’s never cared for her kind — or the survival of anyone at all. Everyone knows real health isn’t just about eliminating disease, but surviving the economic disparities of a city long set on becoming its own solitary being. Buster follows after dutifully, the bulk of him casting a shadow across the four lanes of asphalt.
“I want a burger, and some fries, and a shake. You better be starving because I don’t want to smell the leftovers on the drive home.” And then she yawns, mouth stretching, pearly teeth and human flesh beneath. “That will be the first cure. Tomorrow — I want those stitches looked at.”
“Yes ma’am,” Sei yields. “Anything else?”
Stella scoffs, short and light, and her cat ears move of their own accord. Chromosomes picked for her before birth, setting her astray, just like Sei.
She’s pretty.
If she responds to her question Sei doesn’t hear it. They trip over a pothole, stumble, and impossibly laugh.
The thing about surviving is that resilience is not pretty. It’s leaky, like the armor that’s been stripped away can no longer hold all her parts, and even if she’s Sei and she’s been built to endure in a body of her very own she still slips through the cracks of this new life like water through a sieve.
Stella keeps pulling her back from the edge. Even in their youth, Stella was leading, and Sei trailed after her because Stella was not quite put together either.
On the playground as children, when the White Knight stuck his fingers into Stella’s eye and she screamed, Sei felt her body split into two: her spirit rushed to hold her, and her body rushed to violence. Neither were successful. But it was the attempt that mattered. Sei has never looked away from darkness since.
A designer child and a girl with a dangerous streak for catching air huddled in gravel and rubber chips, hands clutched, bodies pooled together like water upon a carpet. It was strange to be horizontal in a place outside of her own bed, but with Stella’s soft hands upon her, the true danger of near death was fuzzy, like seen through a bubble or warped glass.
Emergency services had lifted Sei from the grime, brushed the crumbs from her back, and real White Knights rushed in to gather their bleeding bodies while the culprit hollered into the open air, children’s blood upon him, hysterics sentencing him to his fate as well. That was her idea of justice for years, Sei knows, formed under duress: an exchange of blows.
Sei remembers thinking that the limousine on the main street, dark and slender like a wild cat, followed behind the ambulance like a rear guard, slinking from one street to the next. It brought her comfort without knowing Buster well yet as familiar faces do.
On the way to the emergency room Stella yelled at her and cried. Sei had teared up, because physical pain compelled the body to allow it release, but from shock too, and the strength of Stella’s deliverance of her panic and fear that Sei would be separated from her for an unacceptable length of time while she healed.
Sei’s mother met them at the hospital and under her arm days later Sei was lead away, breath wheezy where her ribs had cracked. Stella was undergoing surgery and was heavily monitored by guards hired by her family. They weren’t taking visitors, but when Stella made it home at last, she phoned her and asked her about her ribs while Sei asked if her new eye could shoot lasers. It did not, but it looked cool, and Sei never worried too much about it after that.
The long fall from the bank was nothing in comparison.
Sei thinks her protective urge started long ago then. To be a balm or a steady force in the face of danger, all she had to do was endure.
It’s why when Stella slaps her upon her return Sei smiles in the face of it and takes the force of her care for what it is — love, immutable in the face of an almost loss, the one treasure that goes unsaid between them when violence has shaped them both. It’s why too, when Stella hen pecks her and reels her in at the same time, face a little more honest than usual, Sei wonders if Stella’s learned something about herself too.
Glitch City will fold like a tower of cards. Over a beer that’s not a beer but a strange pretender within the modified luxury of Stella’s apartment, popcorn spins in a microwave and Sei listens to Stella talk and the kernels explode like mini gunfire. It’s a normal evening among familiar company but the world is not what it once was. Or rather, the darkness that has always lingered just below the surface has risen and bubbled over to a point where the veneer has peeled off. Sei isn’t sure where she belongs in this new world, but watching Stella’s back gives her stability as the horizon seemingly catches fire.
“My father said there’s no chance of Apollo Trust coming back from this. Their handling has bankrupted them and besides that no one has faith in them anymore.”
“Mm,” Sei says.
“I’ve been reading the papers. The White Knights are doomed. Even the Valkyries are under fire just for being part of the same branch.”
“Stupid,” Sei mutters. The seconds between kernels lessens. She pops the door on the microwave and steam wafts out.
Behind her, glasses slide across the cool granite counter, and while Sei pours the steaming popcorn into a bowl a cold glass touches the back of her arm. She jumps. “Too cold,” Sei protests, spinning, “I’m not drinking that.”
“Don’t worry,” Stella laughs, “You’d sleep if you did anyway. And this one’s yours — disgustingly lukewarm. I pulled it out this morning and everything.”
Sighing, Sei leans back against the counter to observe Stella’s smug smile. Her face scrunches up, button nose pink and cute, and her artificial eye holds her as softly as a real one. Or at least, Sei thinks she can assume there’s no difference any longer if the body hasn’t rejected it.
“Do you think Buster’s mad that I’ve gotten so many more advantages since I was brought on?”
“No,” Stella says easily. “He knows how we are. Probably gives him peace of mind. I saw him playing a phone game yesterday, would you believe it?”
Sei bites her lips. “That’s not good. What if I’m not capable?”
“What? Don’t be ridiculous.”
“I’m being serious,” Sei protests.
Stella looks at her. “You’ve been taking care of me for ages. You can’t trust for a minute that I want to do the same for you? My father is happy to pay you and on top of that I’m relieved to have good company.”
“Sorry. It’s — I don’t know what to do,” she laughs. Sei pushes her short hair away from her face, then spins, gathering her drink and food both.
“We’ll figure it out,” Stella promises. “I’m sure something foolhardy will happen with work and you’ll need to swing a fist or two.”
“I’d rather it didn’t.”
“Then I’ll find a different task for you. You know what, stop thinking about it. Just drink your beer. It’s New Year’s next week. Maybe you can become a party planner’s assistant.”
Sei sips obediently and rolls her eyes. The uncertainty disappears in the same second because she believes her.
Vallhalla’s lights don’t reach here nor does the company of the illustrious bartender, who Sei has heard did not make her final rent payment. This bar is dark, greasy, and shadowed with men and women with a list of criminal charges that rival some of the worst offenders she’s had the displeasure of encountering — but she doesn’t take initiative, simply slips away after closing her tab. Sei leaves, smokes a cigarette for the first time in years, loving the taste and hating the way it makes her stomach roll after, and admits that it might be better after all that she leave this life as she’s known it behind forever. There are no good things for her here anymore — but there are, elsewhere, under better employers yet.
Sei shivers, not from cold in the neon glow of the city lights, but the daunting idea of change.
She gathers her items from her apartment, jiggling open the window from the fire escape because she can’t stand the idea of talking to any of her neighbors, and crawls inside with the breathless finality of visiting a tomb. Clothes, books, a few precious items. The rest can wait and she makes herself scarce. Her phone rings when she takes too long and Sei picks up the pace, reassuring Stella’s bravado with real sincerity, and before she’s halfway there a limousine pulls up to collect her.
Stella’s guest bed greets her every evening, comfortable and made, and the company she keeps is better. Familiar. Perfectly lovely. Her home is lived in and fancy and warm and Sei falls into sleep every night with a sigh and sleeps — for seemingly the first time in her life — deeply.
Everything is the same. Everything is rapidly spiraling into an event she cannot look away from, a realization as daunting as a long fall or a leap.
She would not make it without her support, Sei knows. Her life would have taken an entirely different trajectory. The thought is impossible to understand as it is unwanted.
This changes some things, but not much. Stella has known all along, Sei suspects, because she’s brilliant and always hones in on the small details — and Sei’s always been a little slower on the uptake.
But she’ll be forgiven for it, because Stella still has yet to say the words out loud that Sei suddenly wants to hear.
Stella pushes her thigh against her own. On the faux leather sofa her skin is warm where they touch, nestled together.
Sei tilts her head back. Her hair is still wet at the nape of her neck from the shower and all sensations feel like too much; it’s opposite of what the inhibitors do and their performance must have finally run out because the heat coursing under her skin is electric and impossible. “I’m curious about something,” Sei admits. She breathes. “I want to know what you’re feeling right now.” Stella presses her arm against her own and where they touch the heat is searing. For Stella it must be worse, where there’s no near supernatural treatment in her body that compels her to calm.
“No you don’t,” Stella cautions. Her face is bright red, but for once, she doesn’t look away. Sei presses closer.
“Well I won’t be mad,” she relents. “And it’s strange to try and apologize for something you’re not guilty for. Haven’t I said this a million times.”
Stella quiets. Her fingers lock with her own but tremble. That’s new.
“Stella? Do you remember how shit I was at free-falling when I started? I couldn’t stick a landing.”
“Yes.”
“Well. Do you think I could now? Do you believe in me?”
Stella sighs and shifts against her. Her chest rises and falls with every breath. Her dress has ridden up her thighs but she’s not embarrassed and Sei doesn’t let her eyes linger for long. She’s only just realizing that she’s always been looking. “Why are you asking this?”
“I just. I wanted you to know that I can. That — this won’t be much different than how we’ve always been, right? No matter what you say?”
“You’re so — do you even hear yourself? How can you be so frank?”
Sei leans in. “Do you want me to shut up?”
“I want you to be well. And more than that, well kept!”
Sei sighs. “I need you to be more clear—”
Stella’s lips press soft and furious against her own and end her string of words abruptly. Their hands cling tight to each other’s and Sei finds — shuffling closer — she likes the softness of Stella’s body where it presses in against the steel of her own. When Stella presses a brief kiss against her cheek to separate them, Sei’s skin tingles long after and her head feels full and woozy — like all the bad weight she’s carried is about to run out of her, from her neck down to her toes. She shivers and returns to herself, stunned and simultaneously unsurprised at Stella’s anxious look.
“I don’t want to be without you, Sei. You scared the hell out of me.”
“I know. I was thinking of how to get back but I… I didn’t want to come back as a failure.”
Stella sighs and stands, shaky hands gathering around her unbroken one to pull her up — out of the darkness she’s been leaping into all her life.
“Sleep on it,” Stella says, voice low. “With me. Tonight. Right now. And I’ll tell you what a failure you really are.”
“Really? You’ll say nice things to me then?”
“No, stupid, I’ll make it worse when you’re already a mess — of course I will!”
“I’m getting some mixed messages here, but I think that means you return my feelings.”
“Don’t let it go to your head so quick,” she mutters. “I’m still deciding.” Her face is as red as her hair, but she chews on her lip, fighting a real and quiet smile, and doesn’t let go of her hand.
Sei laughs and lifts the hem of her shirt to wipe her face. Stella makes a noise of irritation but pulls her along in the darkness of the apartment, fingers threaded and locked between her own.
In Stella’s heart that Sei has known all her life, a place for her rests carefully within. There, she knows, there is someone that will light her way out of this mess yet.
“You shouldn’t come any closer,” Sei says. She wraps her hands around the trailing end of her bandage and while the smell of her healing skin and the nanos beneath make her nose wrinkle, Stella only rolls her eyes and trots into her space. The water in the kettle whistles and Stella flips the switch and up-hands the water into the wide basin of the sink. It’s one of the fancy, corporate designs that Sei has seen in every building, modular and gray, and mayhap it’s the same as what she’d seen in the bank, she reminds herself calmly that this is not there, and what associations she makes should not color this safe space Stella has given her.
She is out of the immediate danger and what remains is the sting of Stella’s hand across her unblemished cheek and the sting of tears Sei had hoped not to see. A long fall, some semblance of empty space squeezing at her and compelling her forward toward — toward Stella. Toward home.
Nothing else matters. If she repeats this truth to herself — however inconvenient it is — she will surely believe it in time. Sei knows that Stella would not steer her wrong — even if it brought her some joy to lead her by the hand and control what direction they marched — and even now, with her skin prickling and her nails leaving half moons in her palms, she is compelled to see it through.
Stella wrings the towel out and steam rises between her neatly manicured hands. They’re blood red this week and lovely.
“You have one good arm right now,” Stella says, mechanical eye whirling. Her curled hair trails over her shoulders and down the length of her back and spills forward as she bends. “You’ll allow me this. You need me right now.”
“I’m not incapable,” Sei mutters. She says this more for herself, Stella doesn’t need convincing.
“I know it,” she murmurs back. “You have a real crazy streak. Just this once, let me have my way?”
Despite all the technology and the way the patch peels off her old injury in careful pieces, the skin below is genuinely human and susceptible to pain. Sei thinks, even if Stella’s fingers dug into the tissue, nothing would hurt so much as the prospect of not having this.
And despite the careful, appropriate distance they’ve maintained all their lives, Sei still watches her from beneath the sweep of her lashes, and knows Stella has colored her world in a myriad of ways. There is relief in her touch, joy in her presence, and when Sei closes her eyes to shut it all out, a need to know she’s still there and tangible against her.
The immediacy of near death escapes her. She thinks they will return to how they’ve always been, mirror nanobytes of the other, connected through years and years of intimate knowing.
“Does it hurt?”
“Not much, as long as you’re careful.”
“It hurt a lot when I was a child.”
“I know. You cried for days.”
Stella’s breath and the smell of perfume waft across Sei’s nose. She breathes in deep. She counts her eyelashes, real, and the rise and fall of her chest, real.
Stella puts her hands on her to soothe her, but Sei’s heart picks up speed, racing, and she can put a name to the feeling now. It’s always been there, just under the surface, directing her since they were children. And this moment too will change some things but not others — Stella’s always been the foundation of her world and her need to help, and Sei starts to understand, slowly, as she starts to slip a fingernail under a bandage to reveal the damage beneath, that this might just be that for her too.
Nothing changes, but the world is sharper, more angular than Sei recalls, and it’s her body keeping her alive. Human instinct compels survival against all else and even with the nanos reducing the blow to her psyche the first few weeks still grate against her like gravel in a playground, but the company does not.
The stink of exhaust crawls in under her skin. Sei pauses on the street, wipes her nose on the back of her hand, and resumes her clipped pace. Night edges in against the bruising skyline and clouds high above painted with the neon lights of the city make for a fake halo. Sei knows that there’s real darkness here, just as there’s real people beneath the parts of their choosing or chosen for them at birth. Paths laid before anyone was old enough to know whether it was a direction they wanted to walk. White Knights saw this darkness and meant to pull back the curtain upon it — for a long time, Sei had believed she managed to do some good. Now, it’s all in the air.
Beside her, Stella rubs her gloved hands together. She’s done up in rogue and blush and glittering eyeshadow and beside Sei’s tense figure she looks small and soft. But she’s not soft, not charitable, and her grip on Sei’s arm when she wanders too close to the steep drop at the edge of the road — where a freak sinkhole had taken hold of this quarter and swallowed an old apartment building and smoke and fire had called her to action once upon a time — reminds her clearly. Behind them, the clomp of Buster’s peg leg and his real, heavy foot keep a steady pace with them. His distance means he still trusts Sei — or he trusts Stella to yank her back from true danger, and she doesn’t know which is worse.
“Did I scare you?” Sei blurts out. Stella pulls her further toward the street in answer, away from the yawning abyss below, and they walk in sync, arm in arm. Carolers stream by across the street, a gaggle of girls lit up with lights and fake fur and hats. All around the holiday season is taking hold, but it’s mostly indistinguishable from the colors Glitch City already boasts.
“You’re too comfortable with danger,” Stella says. “Are your inhibitors in need of updating?”
Sei shrugs her shoulders, then winces as it disturbs her sling. “They’re working fine, as far as I know. They’re checked frequently, but it’s not like there’s someone I can easily access. My doc went underground to avoid the hunt. I should wait before I try to find her.”
Stella shakes her head. “You’re not a Knight anymore. Walk like me, a perfectly normal civilian. And you can see my doctor. I certainly pay her enough to keep her trap shut.”
“That’s very manipulative.”
“It’s called client confidentiality,” Stella sighs. “Besides, what’s the point of this if you’re left to suffer,” she mutters. Her agitation simmers beneath the surface but makes her face grow hot.
Sei thinks of what she can say to that. Stella has never been ordinary. Her friendship, her camaraderie, have all been special, luxurious treats. But she’s never lorded it over her or directed her away from danger, simply wished her well in her endeavors and pried out the worst incidents with a drink and food and good company. It is, Sei knows, an unshakable bond that allows them this.
She grips Stella’s arm tighter and lets her pull her across the street where signs wash her hair from orange to green, stained by the glow and ambiance of a city that’s never cared for her kind — or the survival of anyone at all. Everyone knows real health isn’t just about eliminating disease, but surviving the economic disparities of a city long set on becoming its own solitary being. Buster follows after dutifully, the bulk of him casting a shadow across the four lanes of asphalt.
“I want a burger, and some fries, and a shake. You better be starving because I don’t want to smell the leftovers on the drive home.” And then she yawns, mouth stretching, pearly teeth and human flesh beneath. “That will be the first cure. Tomorrow — I want those stitches looked at.”
“Yes ma’am,” Sei yields. “Anything else?”
Stella scoffs, short and light, and her cat ears move of their own accord. Chromosomes picked for her before birth, setting her astray, just like Sei.
She’s pretty.
If she responds to her question Sei doesn’t hear it. They trip over a pothole, stumble, and impossibly laugh.
The thing about surviving is that resilience is not pretty. It’s leaky, like the armor that’s been stripped away can no longer hold all her parts, and even if she’s Sei and she’s been built to endure in a body of her very own she still slips through the cracks of this new life like water through a sieve.
Stella keeps pulling her back from the edge. Even in their youth, Stella was leading, and Sei trailed after her because Stella was not quite put together either.
On the playground as children, when the White Knight stuck his fingers into Stella’s eye and she screamed, Sei felt her body split into two: her spirit rushed to hold her, and her body rushed to violence. Neither were successful. But it was the attempt that mattered. Sei has never looked away from darkness since.
A designer child and a girl with a dangerous streak for catching air huddled in gravel and rubber chips, hands clutched, bodies pooled together like water upon a carpet. It was strange to be horizontal in a place outside of her own bed, but with Stella’s soft hands upon her, the true danger of near death was fuzzy, like seen through a bubble or warped glass.
Emergency services had lifted Sei from the grime, brushed the crumbs from her back, and real White Knights rushed in to gather their bleeding bodies while the culprit hollered into the open air, children’s blood upon him, hysterics sentencing him to his fate as well. That was her idea of justice for years, Sei knows, formed under duress: an exchange of blows.
Sei remembers thinking that the limousine on the main street, dark and slender like a wild cat, followed behind the ambulance like a rear guard, slinking from one street to the next. It brought her comfort without knowing Buster well yet as familiar faces do.
On the way to the emergency room Stella yelled at her and cried. Sei had teared up, because physical pain compelled the body to allow it release, but from shock too, and the strength of Stella’s deliverance of her panic and fear that Sei would be separated from her for an unacceptable length of time while she healed.
Sei’s mother met them at the hospital and under her arm days later Sei was lead away, breath wheezy where her ribs had cracked. Stella was undergoing surgery and was heavily monitored by guards hired by her family. They weren’t taking visitors, but when Stella made it home at last, she phoned her and asked her about her ribs while Sei asked if her new eye could shoot lasers. It did not, but it looked cool, and Sei never worried too much about it after that.
The long fall from the bank was nothing in comparison.
Sei thinks her protective urge started long ago then. To be a balm or a steady force in the face of danger, all she had to do was endure.
It’s why when Stella slaps her upon her return Sei smiles in the face of it and takes the force of her care for what it is — love, immutable in the face of an almost loss, the one treasure that goes unsaid between them when violence has shaped them both. It’s why too, when Stella hen pecks her and reels her in at the same time, face a little more honest than usual, Sei wonders if Stella’s learned something about herself too.
Glitch City will fold like a tower of cards. Over a beer that’s not a beer but a strange pretender within the modified luxury of Stella’s apartment, popcorn spins in a microwave and Sei listens to Stella talk and the kernels explode like mini gunfire. It’s a normal evening among familiar company but the world is not what it once was. Or rather, the darkness that has always lingered just below the surface has risen and bubbled over to a point where the veneer has peeled off. Sei isn’t sure where she belongs in this new world, but watching Stella’s back gives her stability as the horizon seemingly catches fire.
“My father said there’s no chance of Apollo Trust coming back from this. Their handling has bankrupted them and besides that no one has faith in them anymore.”
“Mm,” Sei says.
“I’ve been reading the papers. The White Knights are doomed. Even the Valkyries are under fire just for being part of the same branch.”
“Stupid,” Sei mutters. The seconds between kernels lessens. She pops the door on the microwave and steam wafts out.
Behind her, glasses slide across the cool granite counter, and while Sei pours the steaming popcorn into a bowl a cold glass touches the back of her arm. She jumps. “Too cold,” Sei protests, spinning, “I’m not drinking that.”
“Don’t worry,” Stella laughs, “You’d sleep if you did anyway. And this one’s yours — disgustingly lukewarm. I pulled it out this morning and everything.”
Sighing, Sei leans back against the counter to observe Stella’s smug smile. Her face scrunches up, button nose pink and cute, and her artificial eye holds her as softly as a real one. Or at least, Sei thinks she can assume there’s no difference any longer if the body hasn’t rejected it.
“Do you think Buster’s mad that I’ve gotten so many more advantages since I was brought on?”
“No,” Stella says easily. “He knows how we are. Probably gives him peace of mind. I saw him playing a phone game yesterday, would you believe it?”
Sei bites her lips. “That’s not good. What if I’m not capable?”
“What? Don’t be ridiculous.”
“I’m being serious,” Sei protests.
Stella looks at her. “You’ve been taking care of me for ages. You can’t trust for a minute that I want to do the same for you? My father is happy to pay you and on top of that I’m relieved to have good company.”
“Sorry. It’s — I don’t know what to do,” she laughs. Sei pushes her short hair away from her face, then spins, gathering her drink and food both.
“We’ll figure it out,” Stella promises. “I’m sure something foolhardy will happen with work and you’ll need to swing a fist or two.”
“I’d rather it didn’t.”
“Then I’ll find a different task for you. You know what, stop thinking about it. Just drink your beer. It’s New Year’s next week. Maybe you can become a party planner’s assistant.”
Sei sips obediently and rolls her eyes. The uncertainty disappears in the same second because she believes her.
Vallhalla’s lights don’t reach here nor does the company of the illustrious bartender, who Sei has heard did not make her final rent payment. This bar is dark, greasy, and shadowed with men and women with a list of criminal charges that rival some of the worst offenders she’s had the displeasure of encountering — but she doesn’t take initiative, simply slips away after closing her tab. Sei leaves, smokes a cigarette for the first time in years, loving the taste and hating the way it makes her stomach roll after, and admits that it might be better after all that she leave this life as she’s known it behind forever. There are no good things for her here anymore — but there are, elsewhere, under better employers yet.
Sei shivers, not from cold in the neon glow of the city lights, but the daunting idea of change.
She gathers her items from her apartment, jiggling open the window from the fire escape because she can’t stand the idea of talking to any of her neighbors, and crawls inside with the breathless finality of visiting a tomb. Clothes, books, a few precious items. The rest can wait and she makes herself scarce. Her phone rings when she takes too long and Sei picks up the pace, reassuring Stella’s bravado with real sincerity, and before she’s halfway there a limousine pulls up to collect her.
Stella’s guest bed greets her every evening, comfortable and made, and the company she keeps is better. Familiar. Perfectly lovely. Her home is lived in and fancy and warm and Sei falls into sleep every night with a sigh and sleeps — for seemingly the first time in her life — deeply.
Everything is the same. Everything is rapidly spiraling into an event she cannot look away from, a realization as daunting as a long fall or a leap.
She would not make it without her support, Sei knows. Her life would have taken an entirely different trajectory. The thought is impossible to understand as it is unwanted.
This changes some things, but not much. Stella has known all along, Sei suspects, because she’s brilliant and always hones in on the small details — and Sei’s always been a little slower on the uptake.
But she’ll be forgiven for it, because Stella still has yet to say the words out loud that Sei suddenly wants to hear.
Stella pushes her thigh against her own. On the faux leather sofa her skin is warm where they touch, nestled together.
Sei tilts her head back. Her hair is still wet at the nape of her neck from the shower and all sensations feel like too much; it’s opposite of what the inhibitors do and their performance must have finally run out because the heat coursing under her skin is electric and impossible. “I’m curious about something,” Sei admits. She breathes. “I want to know what you’re feeling right now.” Stella presses her arm against her own and where they touch the heat is searing. For Stella it must be worse, where there’s no near supernatural treatment in her body that compels her to calm.
“No you don’t,” Stella cautions. Her face is bright red, but for once, she doesn’t look away. Sei presses closer.
“Well I won’t be mad,” she relents. “And it’s strange to try and apologize for something you’re not guilty for. Haven’t I said this a million times.”
Stella quiets. Her fingers lock with her own but tremble. That’s new.
“Stella? Do you remember how shit I was at free-falling when I started? I couldn’t stick a landing.”
“Yes.”
“Well. Do you think I could now? Do you believe in me?”
Stella sighs and shifts against her. Her chest rises and falls with every breath. Her dress has ridden up her thighs but she’s not embarrassed and Sei doesn’t let her eyes linger for long. She’s only just realizing that she’s always been looking. “Why are you asking this?”
“I just. I wanted you to know that I can. That — this won’t be much different than how we’ve always been, right? No matter what you say?”
“You’re so — do you even hear yourself? How can you be so frank?”
Sei leans in. “Do you want me to shut up?”
“I want you to be well. And more than that, well kept!”
Sei sighs. “I need you to be more clear—”
Stella’s lips press soft and furious against her own and end her string of words abruptly. Their hands cling tight to each other’s and Sei finds — shuffling closer — she likes the softness of Stella’s body where it presses in against the steel of her own. When Stella presses a brief kiss against her cheek to separate them, Sei’s skin tingles long after and her head feels full and woozy — like all the bad weight she’s carried is about to run out of her, from her neck down to her toes. She shivers and returns to herself, stunned and simultaneously unsurprised at Stella’s anxious look.
“I don’t want to be without you, Sei. You scared the hell out of me.”
“I know. I was thinking of how to get back but I… I didn’t want to come back as a failure.”
Stella sighs and stands, shaky hands gathering around her unbroken one to pull her up — out of the darkness she’s been leaping into all her life.
“Sleep on it,” Stella says, voice low. “With me. Tonight. Right now. And I’ll tell you what a failure you really are.”
“Really? You’ll say nice things to me then?”
“No, stupid, I’ll make it worse when you’re already a mess — of course I will!”
“I’m getting some mixed messages here, but I think that means you return my feelings.”
“Don’t let it go to your head so quick,” she mutters. “I’m still deciding.” Her face is as red as her hair, but she chews on her lip, fighting a real and quiet smile, and doesn’t let go of her hand.
Sei laughs and lifts the hem of her shirt to wipe her face. Stella makes a noise of irritation but pulls her along in the darkness of the apartment, fingers threaded and locked between her own.
In Stella’s heart that Sei has known all her life, a place for her rests carefully within. There, she knows, there is someone that will light her way out of this mess yet.
