vesper

20s, they/them

[idontlikedicktionaries]

REBLOG IF ITS OKAY TO TALK TO YOU.

Please.

[rafayelnocturne]

i’d really appreciate any sort of feedback on the stuff i post lol

i’m posting the parts as i’m writing them because i don’t want to overedit and have them be stuck in development hell (google docs) so i’m open to like ur thoughts and suggestions and all that

[rafayelnocturne]

mdni.

first. prev.

in the morning, Caleb makes breakfast.

it’s such a normal thing, the sound of it waking you before your alarm does, the smell of something warm reaching through the door, that for a moment, between sleep and waking, you forget. and then you remember, and you lie on your back and look at the ceiling and let yourself feel the full weight of what you’ve done.

you get up. you wait for the bile to rise in your throat, for horror to arrive, for guilt to crush you. you put on your uniform with the fleet insignia and you look at yourself in the mirror for a moment, and when you realise you won’t feel anything except for cool numbness and uncertain satisfaction, you go out.

he’s at the stove. he’s in a t-shirt, his hair not yet neat, the cybernetic arm reaching into the sizzling hot pan with certainty. there’s toast on the counter and two cups of coffee already poured.

he glances over his shoulder when he hears you come in. “morning.”

“morning,” you say.

you sit at the counter and wrap your hands around your coffee. neither of you says anything. the eggs are almost done. somewhere outside a transport passes, the muffled hum of engines through the double-glazed windows.

“about last night,” you start.

“don’t,” he says. not unkindly. just flatly, the way he says things when he’s already decided on something. he plates the eggs and sets one in front of you and takes the stool on the other side of the counter. “eat.”

so you eat.

this is, you think, somehow both better and worse than fighting about it.

***

days somehow settle into something you hesitate to call normalcy or routine, but don’t know what else to name it.

sergeant Chen continues to be suspicious of you in the careful, plausibly deniable way of someone who has learned that direct action inside this particular regiment is dangerous. she asks questions that aren’t quite questions. she passes information through you that has clearly been curated. you note it all and pass it to Simone in your daily check-ins, which now happen in the stairwell of a transit hub three blocks from fleet headquarters, because Simone has determined that nowhere in the near vicinity of the building is reliably clean.

“i don’t think she’s hostile,” Simone says, blowing on her takeout cup of some new trendy coffeehouse. she’s wearing civilian clothes, something soft and brightly coloured that makes her look exactly like what your cover story says she is, a tourist from linkon visiting a friend. “she’s just watching him. watching who he trusts.”

“so she’s his, not opposition.”

“feels like it. or she’s playing both sides, but she’s too obvious for that to be working.”

you file that away. you’ve been building a map of the regiment: who reports to whom, where the true loyalties run versus the official ones, which of Caleb’s officers are genuinely his and which are inherited from the previous structure and biding their time. it is slow work, the kind that requires patience you’ve always had to argue yourself into. but it’s coming together.

the harder problem is ever.

ever is in everything and legible in nothing. you’ve found seventeen subsidiaries across the fleet’s procurement records. you’ve found what looks like a ghost funding channel routed through a research division that stopped producing research two years ago. you’ve found two sets of personnel files where the background information simply stops at a certain point, as if the people in question were assembled rather than born.

you tell Simone: “something happened in that series of explosions almost a year ago in Linkon, something that wasn’t just collateral. i’m sure it was ever. they wanted something specific.”

“the Colonel?”

the word lands badly. you keep your voice even. “possibly. or something he had access to. or maybe it’s just connected to the store.” but you don’t believe the words even as they come out of your mouth. the place where Caleb died was just an old corner store, a neighbourhood mart that ran promotions on spring onions and ice cream, nothing that would be of interest to anyone as powerful as ever.

Simone is quiet for a moment, watching a family cross the transit concourse below you, children towing adults by the hands. “how much does he know about ever?”

“i don’t know. he doesn’t talk about it.”

“have you asked?”

you haven’t. because asking would mean telling him why you’re asking, which would mean telling him things you can’t yet afford to tell him. the architecture of your dishonesty is load-bearing and you can’t pull pieces out without checking what falls.

“not yet,” you say.

Simone nods. she doesn’t push. this is one of the things you’ve come to appreciate about her. she understands when questions have ceilings on them.

***

a week after the kiss, Caleb comes to find you in your office again.

you’ve been in a meeting with two captains from the logistics division, the kind of meeting that is officially about supply chain efficiency and is actually about who controls resource allocation in the event of a colonel’s incapacitation. you sat through it with your most professional expression and your most attentive posture, asked clarifying questions about routing protocols that were really questions about chain of command, and came away with a clearer picture of how quickly Caleb’s position could be moved on if he showed weakness.

this, you write in your report to Simone: primary vulnerability is high speed of succession. too many lieutenants with clean lines to the position and a documented record of the colonel’s instability. recommendation: accelerate relationship-building with Tian and Captain Rei as both appear genuinely loyal yet unaware of each other fully and need consolidating before opposition can peel them off.

Caleb knocks. actually knocks, which he didn’t do before.

“come in.”

he does. he looks at you in that way he’s been looking at you since he came back to the fleet offices, like he’s recalibrating distances, calculating where you are in relation to where he needs you to be. he closes the door. checks the room, habitual, for things that don’t belong.

“free for lunch?” he says.

“i have -” you check your schedule, mostly to give yourself a moment. “yes. forty minutes.”

he nods. “there’s a place two blocks east. the Colonel recommends it.” an easy smile is on his face.

though something is not quite right. maybe it’s the tautness of his shoulders. or the way he wavers between a relaxed posture and standing at attention.

still, you play along: “high praise,” you say, and stand.

the place is small and busy and the noise is a relief, the kind of ambient clatter that makes surveillance impractical. you barely have time to glance at a menu before a waitress appears in front of your table, too smiley and giggly for your liking. and then Caleb goes on and orders for you to, which should add to your annoyance. except he did it correctly. ordered the same thing you would have, the same thing you’ve been getting at this type of place since you were fifteen.

you are a creature of habit, unfortunately.

“you’re making alliances,” he says, once the water has arrived. “behind my back.”

“that’s why i’m here. and all my meetings are on the agenda you have access to.”

“Tian came to me this morning. said your name.” he wraps both hands around his glass. “i want to know what you’re doing before you do it.”

“Caleb -” you begin to protest.

“not a negotiation.”

there it is. the mask. you look at him across the table and you can see both versions of him simultaneously, the one who dried your hair and the one who thinks it’s reasonable to demand advance notice of your operational decisions.

both of them are real. this is the thing you keep running into.

“i may be acting as your liaison but you and i both know i report to my captain,” you say. “and through Jenna to the association. you’re not actually my c.o.”

“you’re in my house.”

“i’m in your guest room. at your insistence.” you keep your voice level, the same voice you use in meetings. “those are different things.”

he stares at you. the food arrives. he picks up his chopsticks and you pick up yours and you eat in silence for a while, and then he says:

“Tian has a problem with Shin. historical grievance, goes back to the academy. i need them not to become a problem at the same time.”

you look up.

“Shin is old guard,” he continues. “technically loyal to me on paper. actually loyal to the guy who was in the chair before me.”

“i know,” you say. “i’ve been reading the files.”

“then you know i need someone he won’t see as a threat to approach him.”

Shin wasn’t marked as a priority when you and Simone were going through the files. sure, he doesn’t like answering to Caleb but he didn’t seem like a guy who’d ruffle any feathers. has there been something you missed?

“i want our interests to align,” he says, and the echo of your own words back at you is deliberate, and a little cutting, and you feel the corner of your mouth move despite yourself.

“fine,” you say. “but i need full access to your private correspondence archive. the real one.”

a pause. “that is…” he hesitates.

“a lot of trust,” you agree pleasantly. “yes.”

he looks at you. his eyes shine with something too triumphant for your liking. you look back. outside the restaurant, skyhaven hums along its usual frequencies, that particular engineered quality to the air that never quite becomes natural.

“i’ll send you the credentials,” he says.

you finish your lunch.

next.

[rafayelnocturne]

mdni

first. prev.

the bathroom is in between your room and the living room. you slip in, feeling both dumb for sneaking around and glad for not running into him.

it’s all chrome and dark tile, like the rest of his house. there are always almost reflections moving along the surfaces.

you strip off the day’s clothes and step into the shower. the same shampoo you’re holding is staring at you from the built-in shelf. you don’t know if you want it to be a coincidence or a choice.

at least with all the new appliances, the water pressure is better than the safe house. you stand under the spray until your skin is hot and raw, until the steam has softened the sharp angles of the room, until you stop feeling the shape of his name in your mouth.

when you finally step out, the mirror is all fogged up and your pajamas are unpleasantly damp. the cotton clings to your skin in places.

you swing the door open and watch the steam dissipate outwards, into the darkness of the house. there is light spilling from the living room at the end of the hall, soft and golden.

as if you didn’t notice him, you make way back to your, to the guest room. he doesn’t let you leave.

“meimei.”

Caleb is on the couch, sitting sideways, one arm draped over the back, his body turned toward the hallway like he’s been waiting. there’s a towel draped over his shoulder. a hairbrush on the cushion beside him. a hair dryer on the coffee table.

the sight of him is so familiar, you feel slightly nauseous.

“your hair is wet,” he says.

“astute,” your voice almost breaks. “i took a shower.”

“you’ll catch a cold.”

“i’m not a child.” yet you’ve taken a step toward him, without even noticing.

he holds out the hairbrush. he looks like himself for the first time in a long time. maybe that’s why, when he says: “come here.” instead of going back to the guest room, locking the door, and getting as much distance away from this moment, your feet carry you forward.

you sit down on a cushion in front of the couch and pull up your knees to your chest. rivulets of cool water drip down your shoulders.

there’s rustle of fabric behind you, Caleb shifting around, the soft thump of the hairdryer being moved around.

all too soon, his hands are in your hair.

well, just one. his left hand is gentle, separating strands, soothing touches. his right is holding the brush, works through tangled, staring at the ends and moving up slowly, because he knows that’s the way to avoid snags. you can’t help but think that the cybernetic hand moves differently than flesh. smoother. maybe it’s confirmation bias, you don’t know. but it’s still a reminder that he’s not the same.

“you’re so quiet,” there’s a smile in his voice. “you used to whine and say i was pulling too hard.”

“because you were pulling too hard, gege.”

you feel, more than hear him exhale, almost a laugh. “do i still? does it hurt?” he asks, smile evident in his voice.

it doesn’t hurt like ripped out hair or like pulling at the scalp, no. it feels like being held. it feels like being taken care of in a way you haven’t let anyone take care of you since he died.

“no,” you whisper into your knees.

“that’s good.” he picks up the hair dryer, the heat is gentle against your back. he turns it up some more and buries his hand in your roots and lifts to dry them first.

you close your eyes.

you want to stand firm, to hate him for the presumption of this whole setup, for the way he keeps acting like nothing has changed when it did, it did, it’s undeniable.

but like always, when it concerns Caleb, you just can’t.

so you lean into his touch. and you don’t say anything when he slows down his pace.

and you don’t say anything and neither does he and the only sounds in the warm space between you are the hum of the dryer, and the almost imperceptible sound of your breathing and his breathing, tangled together.

his hands slow.

you notice it the way you notice rain starting, a shift in pressure before the sound. the dryer is still running, the heat of it steady on the back of your neck, but his pace has gone from deliberate to something else entirely. something that has no practical purpose. he’s already dried your hair. you can feel it, light and finished against your shoulders. even the back of your pyjama top is dry by now. and still his fingers move through it, and still you let them, your chin tipped down against your knees, your eyes closed.

you should stand up.

you should say something deflating and practical and go to bed. you’re very good at that, at retreating from him before anything can become a thing that needs to be named. you know when the air shifts. know when to leave.

you don’t stand up.

the dryer clicks off. the silence is loud and immediate. his hand is still in your hair, loose now, a held breath of contact, his fingers just resting at the base of your skull.

“meimei,” he says.

it’s just what he’s been calling you for as long as you can remember, through slammed doors and late nights and the years of distance when all you had was his handwriting, those careful letters from the academy. it sounds different now. or maybe it doesn’t, and you’ve only just let yourself hear it.

you don’t answer.

you turn around instead.

you don’t plan it. that’s what you’ll tell yourself later, in the three-in-the-morning version of this moment that you’ll return to endlessly, picking at it like a wound. you turned around because your neck was stiff, because it was a natural movement, and there was no intent in it. this is a lie. you turn around because something in you has been building toward this for every minute you’ve spent in this apartment, for every careful distance you’ve maintained, for every time you’ve watched him across a dinner table and reminded yourself who he is to you and who you are to each other and all the reasons that those things should be sufficient.

he’s looking at you. of course he is. up close, Caleb’s face is almost painful; you keep forgetting, and then you look at him and you have to remember all over again, that this is not the brother who left for the academy with a too-full bag and a wave he made casual so you wouldn’t cry. this is not the one you buried. this is all of those things at once and something else besides, something that doesn’t have a name you’re willing to use.

the hairbrush is still in his hand. his cybernetic one, the silver-toned fingers loose around the handle in a grip that’s different from how a hand holds things. a little too certain, a little too still.

neither of you moves.

there is no good version of what happens next. you know that, the same way you knew the first time you saw your name still on that office door, that some things have already been decided by versions of yourself you haven’t caught up to yet.

you close the distance.

it is exactly like you imagined. it is nothing like you imagined.

he kisses you back before you’ve fully arrived, like he’s been waiting at the other end of it, like he knew you were coming. one hand comes up to your jaw, his flesh one, tilted like he’s navigating something delicate and might shatter it, and then the kiss changes, goes from tentative to the opposite of tentative, and the hairbrush drops somewhere and his other hand finds your waist, the cool synthetic certainty of it through the fabric of your shirt.

it’s desperate in the way that things are desperate when they’ve been restrained for too long. not graceful. your nose bumps his, your hand grabs the front of his shirt. he makes a sound against your mouth that you will think about for a very long time, something pressed-down and involuntary, like something surfacing.

then you pull back.

not far. just enough to breathe. your foreheads are almost touching, both of you still, suspended in the aftermath of it.

“Caleb,” you say. it comes out barely above a whisper. not a protest. not permission. just his name, in your mouth, the only word you have.

his thumb moves against your jaw. once, a terrible tenderness.

“yeah,” he says. as if you’d asked him something.

you pull back the rest of the way and stand. your legs are not entirely steady. you don’t look at him again. if you look at him you will not leave, and you need to leave, need to put a door between you and this, at least until you can figure out what to do with it.

you go to the guest room. you sit on the bed he made up for you and lay face down and breathe.

outside, you can hear nothing. the apartment is completely silent. you don’t know if that’s good or dangerous.

next.

[fatty-thao]

Caleb's gazing at the sky

[rafayelnocturne]

gege i need you in a way that’s concerning

[rafayelnocturne]

mdni

first. prev.

someone from logistics drones on about supply chains. it is useful information, technically. in the case that the government ever decides to dismantle the fleet, highlights the weak points like flares. yet you just can’t bring yourself to care enough to take detailed enough notes. you nod and smile and crack a joke around the water cooler during the break.

when it’s finally over, you head back to your office. if you are walking faster than usual, it’s not anybody’s business, is it?

he’s waiting for you.

Caleb is standing in front of your door, hands in his pockets, looking at the small screen with your name on it. he could open the door, has access to everyone’s offices on this floor, but he doesn’t.

you bring your card to the reader and push open the door. you don’t invite him in.

“you’ve made yourself quite comfortable,” he says, following you. he shuts the door behind himself.

your stomach clenches.

“it’s a nice office.” you sit down at your desk. open up the screen to stare without seeing at the rest of your schedule for the day.

he stands there, looking around. you get the memory of him visiting your apartment when you first moved out. he looked almost comical in your tiny flat, bumping into everything and complaining about the mirror cutting off at his eye level.

now, with him for scale, the office feels claustrophobic.

“i’m cleared, and back at duty,” he says. “thank you for asking, meimei.”

“i didn’t.”

he almost smiles. it’s a ghost of the sunny smile you used to know. “you’ve gotten colder.”

“you’ve gotten drunker.” it’s a nonsensical reply but it’s the first thing that comes to your mind. whatever, you’ll stand by it, especially seeing how it makes him tighten his jaw. good. you want to hurt him.

“i’m not drinking anymore. that was the one time.” through clenched teeth.

“should i be impressed?”you look up at him, and for the first time today you look him in the eye. really look. they’re clear and his face isn’t bloated, but he’s still the Farspace Fleet Colonel Caleb.

“no.” he holds your gaze. “i’m just telling you.”

you abandon all pretence of work, lean back in your chair. instinctively, cross your arms in front of your chest. “well, congratulations, gege. what do you want?”

he doesn’t answer you straight away. he walks up to the window, presses a button and glass glosses over black, sealing you both in. he makes a circle around the small office, eyes searching for something with a sniper’s precision. you realise it then, what he’s looking for.

“i checked for them this morning.” bugs. it’s been seven hours since then, of course, so you’re still cautious.

you only realised it’s an actual problem in the fleet when a different regiment’s liaison mentioned his ‘weekly bug sweep had to be cut short to meet with you right now, so make it worth, yeah?’ you asked sargent Chen afterwards if maybe it was some inside joke, but apparently it was as routine to bug someone as it was to be bugged.

nest of vipers, truly.

Caleb finishes his circuit. returns to where he was standing before, posture and his very being still at attention. “i think it’s less about what i want and more about what you do.”

you hear your heartbeat bumping in your ears. you imagine Simone, listening in on this conversation. if you don’t handle it carefully, she can decide to pull you and it will all be over before it really began.

“i want the same thing you do.” you say, slowly, carefully. “our interest align.”

“don’t lie to me. you’re not here to check the weather are you? you’re not here because you missed skyhaven.” not because you missed me. “what could your interest be here?”

and he had the nerve to call you cold earlier.

you keep your voice steady.

“the fleet is unstable. if it collapses, the daa won’t be able to cover, the tunnels will become a free-for-all. civilians will die. my interest is making sure that fucking doesn’t happen.” is it not enough of a reason?

“and you think you can do that?”

“i think you know i can.” you stand up. you’re tired of him looking down at you. “otherwise you wouldn’t have kept my position open, wouldn’t have kept my office. you planned to ask me to come back. i just beat you to it.”

something flickers across his face, gone before you can name it, mask firm on his face.

he walks to the window again, even though it’s impossible to see through. just to stand with his back to you, probably.

the blacked out glass reflect nothing but the shape of him, and more murky, the shape of you, and the office that feels smaller with every breath you take.

when he speaks, he sounds just like he used to when you two would stay up too late on a school night to do dumb shit instead of falling asleep, cautious of being heard and sent to bed. soft in a way that makes you want to lean in. “i need you to stay with me.”

you blink. “i’m here, aren’t i? liaison position, remember?”

“no.” he turns around, the mask cracking at the edges.

before he can continue, you interrupt: “what do you mean no? did the whisky destroy too much brain matter, gege?” something about this almost-vulnerability of his makes you want to dig your fingers in.

he takes a stuttering breath, seemingly stopping himself from taking the bait. “stay with me. at my house.”

“Caleb—”

“the apartment you’re staying at can’t be secure.” he says it like it’s a fact. “anyone could find out who you are, anyone could compromise you.”

you are so taken aback by the sheer audacity, by the insulting notion that you would ever be so careless as to be caught, and most of all… “so you kick me out, you fucking yell at me to get out and now you want me what? come live with you?”

his face gives away nothing. “yes.”

“that’s bullshit and you know it!”

he doesn’t flinch. “it will be easier to coordinate if we’re in the same place.”

“i’m literally your glorified secretary! we can coordinate all we want during the work hours.”

“the mission. my goals. you said our interest align.” he steps closer. “prove it, meimei.”

this is a trap. alarm bells going off in your mind, you know it’s a trap, but something about the way he’s looking at you, mask off, shattered to reveal something pleading and hungry underneath, it makes it hard to think.

“i have a partner. she, um, she’s staying at the apartment, we need to be contact regularly.”

“then she can stay at the apartment. you can go to report there or she can come to our place, i don’t care. i don’t care about her.” his voice drops. “i care about you.”

“why, Caleb?”

he doesn’t answer right away. he walks toward you, slow, deliberate, until he’s close enough that you smell his aftershave. he still uses the same one from academy days.

“because i want you there.” he’s quiet again. “because i sleep better when i know where you are.”

you should say no. you should tell him you have to prioritise the mission objective, your partner, and maintain the cover. you should remind him that you don’t trust him, that he doesn’t trust you.

but you think of the empty chair at grandma’s table. the card that’s soft and worn from your hands. the way he held to when he cried, and the way he shoved you away.

you think about how you will always come back to him.

“fine,” you hear yourself say.

his expression opens even more, relief loosening his shoulders. something in your chest twists at the sight.

“but,” you add, “it’s only for the duration of the mission. and Simone has a way to reach me at all times.”

“i set up the guest room already.”

of course he did.

***

Simone is… less than thrilled about it but after your insistence that you are only going to monitor him more closely, she acquiesces. you have a distinct feeling she just let you have it. you wonder if your desire is that evident in your eyes.

***

the guest room is not a guest room.

you realise it the moment you step inside. the clothes from you duffel, the ones you brought that night, the ones you left behind in your hurry to get out, are folded neatly in the closet. your old things. a sweater you wore in high school. a pair of pyjama shorts with a faded pattern. a hoodie that used to be his. they look even more childish next to your collection of slacks, modest skirts and white shirts.

like evidence of a girl you used to be. evidence of a girl you’re no longer capable of being.

he washed them and folded them and put them on shelves like he expected you to come back.

you sit on the edge of the bed. the mattress is different from the safe house apartment. firmer. just how you like it.

you press your palms against your eyes and breathe.

next

[rafayelnocturne]

a/n: lowkey didn’t think it through before making it so mission focused so please handwave the work/lore inaccuracies. should make enough sense regardless.

mdni

first. prev.

there is always this low hum when the coelum express is in motion, something that settles deep in your bones, like you’re standing too close to speakers at a concert, just on a smaller level. you asked Caleb about it once, and he told you that you’re just very sensitive.

maybe you are, because Simone doesn’t seem bothered at all, scrolling through something on her pad, posture too casual for someone about to head into a conflict zone. she catches you looking and grins.

“what? i’m excited. been a while since i got to do something that wasn’t the same upgrade on a hundred pistols or a wanderer patrol on the same beat.”

“you know we aren’t on vacation?” comes out meaner than you usually are.

“well, duh, but i do have a bunch of places saved from my feed i’m planning to visit during the off hours. and i expect you,” finger pointed at your chest, “to accompany me! and take super cute pictures of me!”

you shake your head. despite yourself, something in your chest loosens. just a little. “well, if i have to,” you say with playful annoyance. your mouth twitches trying to repress a smile.

“sure you do.” she really is beautiful. maybe this mission will not be that bad, if you have her by your side.

***

skyhaven station is all polished chrome and harsh artificial light, so foreign and different from linkon’s warm chaos.

the hunters’ association arranged for a place. a regular two bedroom apartment with a six digit code lock. just ten minutes from the fleet headquarters, so most of your neighbours are probably fleet staff. the place is small but clean, and the furniture is so generic you’ll probably be able to find this exact combo in a catalogue. the fridge is empty except for a half-full water filter but the pantry is stocked with, thankfully unopened, rice and udon.

you usher Simone into the bedroom with the nicer view, since she’ll be up here a whole lot more than you. the other bedroom’s window is mostly obstructed with overgrown tree branches.

you drop your duffel on the floor and sit on the edge of the bed. the mattress is too soft.

you pull out your pad and check your fleet credentials. you’ve checked immediately after leaving Jenna’s office, and while packing, and while on the way to the station, and three times during the express ride but it hasn’t removed the fear that you were wrong and actually hallucinated everything or something, so you check once more.

still active. same clearance, same access.

he kicked you out of his house but kept your position in the fleet.

***

the next morning, you put on the farspace fleet staff jacket over a neutral uniform of black slacks and a white shirt. inconspicuous. professional.

Simone is already in the kitchen, mixing in some ridiculous creamer to her coffee. you two ordered grocery delivery last night, frankly, going a little overboard on the company card.

you tell her good morning and grab a protein yoghurt (which started as a way to hit your macros and turned into an annoyingly expensive habit) from the fridge.

“morning,” she says, turning to look at you. “you know, you kinda look like you’re going to a funeral, but it’s like, you killed that person.”

“thanks?”

“i mean it in the best way possible. very chic, very don’t mess with me.”

you pour yourself a glass of water. what you certainly don’t need are artificial nerves from caffeine on top of everything today.

you both sit on the kitchen counter, even though there is a perfectly good table not two meters away. Simone sips her coffee, and asks “you got your comms?”

“yeah, they’re…” you pat around the pockets, “right here. i was gonna put them on before leaving.”

she reaches over with her palm open. “hand them here for a sec.” you comply and she puts down her coffee, closing both her hands over your comms. “comms don’t see too much wear and tear usually but remind me to check them over in, like, three days okay?”

you watch in quiet fascination as her evol works. “sure.”

Simone hands them back to you. upon inspection, not much has changed about them, at least from outside.

“the reach is better now. shouldn’t have too much trouble even if they have some kinda block inside the building. if you get in trouble, i’ll come running.”

“hope you come running before i get in trouble.”

she laughs like you just told a joke.

***

you have to retie your combat boots before you can take two steps out of the apartment. you tied them tight enough to cut off circulation, so tight that even the leather creaks. you didn’t notice.

whatever.

you leave the apartment, leaving Simone inside. she promises to order pizza by the time you return, “so don’t eat dinner, okay?”

the weather is nice but you always feel like the air in skyhaven is too thin, even though you know that it’s the same density as linkon. denser than some points in snowcreast even.

the building is impossible to miss, all sharp angles and dark glass, like a chef’s knife driven into the skyhaven skyline. there are scanners at every door, and there are guards at the entrance.

you flash your card. the system beeps. green.

and just like that, you’re let in.

just as you’re about to walk away, one of the guards says “miss!”

he doesn’t look angry, or concerned even. he continues: “they told me to ask you to wait in the lobby.”

“sure.” you expected to make the way to the office, quiet and unnoticed, but seems like they anticipated you here.

the lobby is drab, despite how futuristic it is. officers walk past in neat uniforms, barely raising their voices above a whisper when talking to each other.

you have to wait two minutes before someone approaches.

she’s young, maybe a little older than you, under thirty for sure, with a sergeant’s insignia and a face that’s too cute for the severe expression she tries to put on. she says your name in a distinctly corporate tone.

“that’s me.”

she reaches out to shake your hand. “sergeant Chen. the colonel asked me to escort you to your office and check if everything is stocked for your return.” she pauses. “he was unable to greet you personally. he sends his apologies.”

unable. you wonder what that means. still on enforced leave? still drunk? still doesn’t want to look at you?

“that’s fine,” is all you can say.

sergeant Chen falls into step beside you. her posture is military-perfect, hands clasped behind her back. “i understand you served as the colonel’s liaison previously,” she says, almost conversational. it makes you cautious.

“briefly.”

“and you’ve returned to continue that role?”

“that’s the plan.”

she nods, like she’s filing information away. “i understand that you were assigned to this position by the colonel himself.”

you glance sideways at her. her face is still neutral, but her eyes are sharp, too curious, borderline suspicious.

“yes.”

you aren’t giving her much, not with words nor with your actions, so she continues “it is unusual though, isn’t it? to return to a position after being reassigned.”

is that the story Caleb tells them? well, you can play along. “perhaps it is. i don’t question orders.”

she doesn’t ask anything else. but you can feel her watching you.

the walk to your office takes you through corridors you recognise. largely, the headquarters is all the same: sterile lighting, closed corridors, feeling of being observed.

sergeant Chen stops in front of a door. your name is on a small led screen on the wall.

“here we are,” she says.

you bring your card to the reader and push the door open.

the office is as you left it: small, a single window that looks out at another building in the complex, a half-used fleet notepad with a pen on top of it.

“the interim liaison left your schedule in the database.” she lingers in the door. “we didn’t get to connect the previously but we are both in colonel Xia’s regiment, so let me know if there is anything you need. i’m just down the hall.”

“thank you.”

she leaves. you stand in the middle of the room.

he kept your office, too. only instated an interim liaison. is it care or arrogance that he thought, no, knew, you’d be back?

the chair creaks when you sit down. you pull up the database and start reading.

***

the first few days blur together.

you settle into a routine. work out in the morning. arrive at the office by 0755. read reports. attend meetings. take notes. remember who’s in your regiment and who isn’t. smile at people you can’t trust.

Simone handles the reporting. you’re grateful for that. you don’t have to translate everything you see into something that makes sense for the association, you just have to see it or hear it.

and you do. a lot.

the farspace fleet is a nest of vipers.

on the surface, it’s all a paramilitary organisation, that takes care of its city, that launches research initiatives, that patrols the tunnel. discipline, order, ranks.

beneath that, it’s almost…chaotic.

the main fault line is between daa graduates and everyone else. the ones that were scouted out of the academy, who knew each other as cadets, who have years of shared history. and the ones who didn’t. the ones who transferred in from government branches, who were recruited for their skills.

Caleb sits precariously out of the two groups. he went to the academy but was fast-tracked, promoted too young, given power people spent years working for.

it’s enough to get both to resent him.

you see it in the way they talk about it. careful and diplomatic inside his regiment. the way other regiments say his name almost like it’s a curse.

and then there are factions inside these factions. military personnel versus the scientists, wanderer experts versus the protocore focused, and so on and so forth. alliances formed and broken, favours traded, debts called in. it’s bureaucratic warfare.

and a throughline underneath all of it, ever.

ever is everywhere and nowhere. you see their name, or one of its countless subsidiaries, in funding reports, research grants, in the fine print of contracts. but when you try to trace the threads, they vanish.

you can’t wrap your head around it yet. not fully.

but you understand enough.

Caleb is young, powerful, isolated. and he has enemies on every side, even behind his back.

there are two ways to stabilise this, opposites of each other. but only one that you’re willing to consider. build an unofficial coalition, play the game, bring people to his side. low- and high-ranking alike. make it so costly to move against him, anyone would consider it twice before deciding it’s not worth it.

you make a note of it in your report for Simone. recommendation: identify potential allies to cultivate relationships. isolate the opposition.

***

days pass like this. until, Caleb shows up.

you’re in one of the countless corridors, heading to a meeting when you see him. he’s standing outside of his office, talking to someone you can’t see. his uniform is immaculate, posture perfect. his face is the stone mask you’ve come to identify as Farspace Fleet Colonel Caleb.

he looks at you just for a second.

you keep walking.

your heart is pounding in your ears.

next.

[rafayelnocturne]

a/n: Inspired by Imperial Thronesong but takes place in the main storyline, with the exception that Caleb is the only one to ‘die’ in the explosion. lapslock intended. mdni.

~

Caleb doesn’t drink.

but he is drunk tonight. you shut the door behind yourself.

he doesn’t drink because he doesn’t like to lose himself. and because after a slightly traumatizing PSA in fifth grade about drunk driving - holographic crash simulations, a daughter’s voice screaming over the emergency broadcast - you ran to him with tears in your eyes and made him promise he wouldn't. grandma thought it was funny. but Caleb took the promise seriously. he always took his promises to you seriously.

that was before the explosion. before you buried his empty casket. before he came back as someone else.

his room smells of whisky. this is part of the new Caleb, Farspace Fleet Colonel Caleb, almost unfamiliar in his difference Caleb. the smell makes your stomach clench.

you watch him attempt to sit up, the spectacle almost pathetic. so far removed from your ever competent brother. his cybernetic hand is shaking, drink spilling out of the glass over his hand. does he even feel that? can he?

he hisses, and that’s when you notice the blood on his left hand. his real one. the one that used to hold yours when you crossed the street, back when grandma’s house used to feel big and safe.

“oh, hell,” you say, more to yourself than to him.

you have learned that if Caleb in a bad mood is anything, he is a gravity well you’ve taught yourself to navigate around, or at your bravest, straight through to the event horizon. of him. you know his ugliness like it’s your own. the way he can be cold, calculating, the way he looks at enemies like they're already dead. but now, the way Caleb drinks like he cannot bring himself to stop, as if he’s attempting to blur images only he can see. the drink leaves him angrier, contentious in a way you don’t recognise. the Caleb you grew up with was sunny, patient, steady. this one snaps. and you still want to touch him. that’s the worst part.

he finally looks at you, dimly, as if you could be anyone. as if anyone else would just march into his bedroom. or maybe, he just wishes you were anybody else.

“yeah, it’s me, Caleb. your sister? remember me?” you take off your jacket and drape it over the empty chair in the corner of the room. roll up your sleeves. “you called me,” you say, then, reproachful, “well, you called grandma and i answered.”

you don’t tell him how it took you a second to realise it was his voice, slurring, so unlike him. you’d been sitting in grandma’s kitchen, the same kitchen where you'd learned to peel tangerines in one go, where he'd let you cheat at cards. the call came through on the old landline and his voice was soft and raw.

“i need -” a pause. breathing. “gran, can you please -”

you don’t tell him about booking the next coelum express with shaking hands, about overpaying for the last minute reservation. you don’t tell him about packing the duffel in a hurry with stuff from your childhood bedroom at grandma’s. you don’t tell him about running to his house when the maglev was down due to an accident and driving around it would have added forty minutes.

you stand over him where he is crumpled against the foot of his bed like gravity flattened him there. the rim of the glass bumps against his lip as he unsteadily tries to swallow more down. it’s like watching a man drown himself. you can’t look away.

“so is this what happens when the fleet enforces mandatory leave on you?”

technically, you aren’t supposed to know this. the official report said medical sabbatical. but you were restless on the express, and your last mission taught you quite a bit about how to fake clearance in the fleet networks. a few well-placed inquiries, a backdoor you'd discovered during your dive into previous UNICORNS operations, and you had his file. redacted in places, but enough to get a rough picture.

Behavioural health disposition determination: Does not meet medical retention standards. Recommend immediate leave. Cybezin dose ineffective. Risk of harm to self: High. Individual displays signs of—.

the rest was redacted.

he ignores you. he raises the glass again, and it’s more successful this time. Caleb drinks the way he does everything else: determined and intentional, eyes open and aware. as if he’s provoking something from somewhere up high to try him. he drinks like he thinks it won’t hurt him. and comes back for more. you imagine he fucks the same way; without concern.

“get up,” you say. it feels wrong and misplaced. despite running here, you don’t know what to do with Caleb when he’s like this. you don’t know how to be the one to take care of him, instead of the other way around.

you couldn’t get used to it when he died. not having him to lean on.

and now he’s here, and you still can’t lean.

“get up,” you try again. you extend a hand to him. he looks at it, squinting, then tries to clamber to his feet without your help. pride. even drunk out of his mind, he has that. he reaches his feet and his full weight leans against you. the near empty empty glass slips from his hand, and it breaks into three big pieces and countless tiny chips that scatter across the floor like fallen stars.

he stumbles, gripping the collar of your shirt. Caleb is never this graceless. he’s so heavy, tugging down the stretchy material of your shirt till it digs into the back of your neck painfully. his breath is hot and sour against your temple. he’s heavy.

“Caleb. gege, you need to get it together.”

he doesn’t reply, but his flesh hand is on the back of your neck, his blunt nails making tiny crescents in your skin. he straightens up, wobbly and too tall to lean on you properly. you brace yourself under his arm anyway.

last time you did this, he twisted his ankle jumping the fence to get you an apple from your neighbour’s orchard. you told him you’d grow taller. he laughed and said there was no need. that it was his duty as your older brother to be bigger ad stronger to protect you.

you make your way to the bathroom, it’s just a few steps, but your pace is halting. all you smell is his blood and the whisky. iron and alcohol.

the light is bright and unforgiving when you turn it on.

like everything else in his new apartment, the tile is dark. there’s a mirror that takes up half the wall, backlit with stark LEDs. brutalist. expensive. skyhaven sleek, and hardly lived in. you didn’t like it when you first saw and you don’t like it now.

Caleb slumps down against the wall, his cybernetic hand reaching for a glass that isn’t there.

you kneel over him. the floor is cold beneath your knees, seeping through your sweatpants. you wet a washcloth and start blotting at his face. it feels like a twisted perversion of the usual routine of him bothering you until you apply your skincare on him too. his skin is clammy, too red in the cheeks and too pale everywhere else. the uncomfortable feeling only grows, as if this is something you should’ve never seen.

this is not the brother who taught you to ride a bike. not the promising young man who died in the explosion. this is someone else wearing his face, and you feel grief for him even as he sits across from you on the floor of his bathroom.

grief and something uglier at seeing him so vulnerable under you.

you take his left hand in yours. the one that can still be hurt. the cuts aren’t deep, though you don’t know how he got them, but they’re bleeding steadily. you clean them. you dress them with supplies you find under the sink, the same place you keep your first aid kit. the same place grandma taught you both to put it.

Caleb stinks of iron, whisky, his own sweat. male skin. this is the great Farspace Fleet Colonel, hell. he tips his head back against the tile and his throat bobs as he swallows repeatedly. you watch his adam’s apple move up and down.

“are you going to be sick?”

Caleb shakes his head. and then he keeps shaking it, increasingly manic, his skull bouncing off the wall. a spike of fear drives through you as you watch him, unsure how to stop him. his cybernetic hand twitches, fingers opening and closing on nothing.

“hey,” you say. “gege?” you reach for his shoulder, in an attempt to steady him. he stills and you breathe out.

his face screws up in an entirely unfamiliar way, lips going wide, like something that could be called a smile by the loosest definition. he started to shake under your hand, either in laughter or tears. you cannot tell.

“he’s dead,” he says through his teeth. “`he’s dead and i couldn’t stop it. he’s dead, dead, dead.”

you can’t move. the fear is overwhelming now, ice in your veins. did something happen to Kevi in the few weeks you’ve been away? “who is?”

Caleb only shakes his head again. he turns to the side, mumbling something, a name maybe, or a mission designation. you can’t tell, the syllables slip away before you can catch them.

it is too easy to imagine Kevi, his little body gone up in flames. the boom of an explosion. the heavy weight of responsibility and fear and grief.

you duck to the side, try to catch his gaze. when that doesn’t work, you grab his face in both your hands and lift it to yours. his jaw is rough with stubble. his eyes are wet. you can feel his pulse under your palms.

“who is dead, Caleb?”

the name he gives you is unfamiliar. a soldier under his command, you suppose. someone he lost. someone he couldn't save. you feel near guilty at your own relief.

“alright then,” you whisper. his face is still in your hands. “it’s alright then.”

but then he says something else. something that sounds like you thought I was dead and I couldn’t—

he doesn't finish. the words collapse into a sob.

seeing him cry is like seeing lightning in the middle of a sunny day. something that you know is possible but just shouldn’t happen.

maybe that is all this life has been for Caleb since the explosion. One long detonation, different battles fought along the way, the carnage still the same. the store. the Fleet. this very room. the fire that took him from you and spat him back out wrong.

you try to get his sweat soaked shirt off him, but he refuses to cooperate. limbs heavy, body solid even as he trembles. you sit back on your heels and watch the tears tracking down his cheeks, catching the light, dripping down his collar. he’s silent all the while.

“Caleb,” you say, voice traitorously breaking, making you far too quiet. lower your hands from his face, down his neck, rest them on his chest. and hell, you hate him.

his heart is beating rabbit-fast under your hands and you hate him. you hate him for letting you believe he was dead. for the months you spent grieving, the sleepless nights, the way you’d reach for him in a crowd and remember he wasn’t there. for the times you took a shower late at night and wanted him to dry your hair, only to remember that he was dead and that you can’t have him anymore. you hate him for coming back as someone else. for standing in front of you in that Fleet uniform and his cold cold eyes and saying “i did this for you”. as if it made any of that okay.

still, you run your fingers through his damp hair. you let him lean into you, let his hands circle your waist, let him cry into your chest. you remain kneeling over him, your knees aching against the hard tile. his tears soak through your shirt.

you rest your cheek on the top of his head. “whatever it is, it’s alright,” you lie. “i’m here. i’m here, gege, everything will be alright,” a truth, a lie. maybe. you don’t know anymore.

Caleb is alive. truth. maybe.

he stops crying as suddenly as he started. you feel it, his body going tense under yours, his hands stiff on your back, like he doesn’t know if he wants to pull you closer or push you away.

he must make a choice, because he shoves you away, hard. the cold tile rushes up to meet your palms. you barely manage to catch yourself from falling all the way over.

the first thing you notice when you look up at him is that his eyes are red-rimmed. the second is that his skin is still blotchy. only the third is the way his face is contorted in anger pointed at you. as if you did this to him.

“get out,” he hisses.

cold seeps deep into your body.

“you wanted to leave, so leave!” he’s never raised his voice like this at you. his voice echoes off the tile. “out!”

you straighten up, pins and needles in your legs from sitting for so long. your hands are shaking with fury.

being angry at Caleb is not new. he’s the closest person you’ve ever had, he knows all the wrong buttons to press. but this is unfamiliar anger. you feel ready to wrap your hands around his throat.

“what the hell, Caleb. it’s like i don’t even know who you are anymore!”

he nods his head, face getting that familiar i’m such a patient older brother look, like you’re just in one of your moods. like you’re the one being unreasonable. “you wanted to leave me. so i want you out.” his voice is steady, like he’s sobered up. it only makes it hurt worse.

“fine. if that’s what you want. and i always have to do what gege wants, right?” you spit out. “meanwhile you drink yourself to death, dig yourself another grave, what does it fucking matter, huh, Caleb? we’ve already gathered i can survive it. is that what you want?”

he scowls like a wild animal, cornered and dangerous.

you don’t know if you will ever be able to forgive him. for today. for the explosion. for the months of silence. for the way he looked at you when you found him alive, like you were the one who had done something wrong.

“look what you do with my love,” you say.

and then you are gone.

next.

[rafayelnocturne]

mdni

prev.

after Caleb kicks you out, you have this vindictive desire to storm back and make him listen to all your scolding and tangled feelings. make him untangle the mess, take the responsibility for all the knots and hurt. but you don’t want to see his face. you just go back to linkon.

you go back to work the next day.

because that’s all you can do. put one foot in front of the other and pretend the world still makes sense.

the association is humming when you walk in with the usual chaos. hunters rushing between briefings, the clatter of keyboards, the low static of comms checks. someone's birthday cake sits half-eaten in the break room. you sit at your desk. you pull up today’s assignments.

thankfully, you’re paired with Tara today. she’s such a ray of sunshine, just being around her all day makes something relax in you. you talk about the new exhibition in azure square, and she tells you that she went there on her latest day off. shows off her cute pictures, then tells you about the otto game they rolled out in honour of the exhibition and you gush over the collectibles. it’s almost like you’re normal twenty somethings.

the patrol has to end though. and you have to go home.

when you get there, all you can think about is that fucking card. you tried to shove it into a drawer and forget about it. when you almost tore it out of the tracks at 3am, despondent, hoping another reread would reveal something new, you gave up.

you keep it on the kitchen counter now. the edges are soft, worn from your fingers.

i can’t be who you want me to be.

he just left you with that. just let you sit with it. and next week he called the house and made you run to him only to kick you out.

you open your fridge to get dinner started and just press your forehead against the door and you breathe. the air inside the fridge smells like plastic.

you need to go back to him.

the thought arrives fully formed, like it's been waiting for you. like it's been there all along, just beneath the surface.

you need to go back to skyhaven. not as a visitor, not as someone who runs when he pushes her away.

you need to be there. officially.

it makes sense. you tell yourself that. it's logical. you have clearance already. you know the fleet's protocols. you have a direct line to the colonel himself. if the hunter's association wants intel on their infighting, on the aether core fragments, on what's really happening in skyhaven, you're the obvious choice.

it's not about him.

it's not.

you pull up the request form before you can talk yourself out of it.

***

Jenna call you into her office the next day. she doesn't look up when you walk in, reading something on her pad, her mouth pressed into a thin line, the lines of her face making her look more severe than usual.

“close the door,” she says.

you do.

she lets you stand there for a while. you know she’s kinder than for it to be a tactic to make you nervous. it doesn’t stop your stomach from tying into knots.

“so,” she says finally, “skyhaven.”

“yes, ma’am.”

“we pulled you out on your initiative and you want to go back.”

“i was … overearly, and now that i’ve had time to reflect on it, i want to continue the mission. we have not achieved our objective. i had to leave too many blank spaces on the report. there is something much more sinister going on in the fleet that we have yet to uncover.”

Jenna leans back in her chair, her eyebrows raised like she’s asking you to go ahead. so you do.

“the situation inside is unstable. the recently promoted colonel,” you feel your throat tighten despite yourself, “he’s attracting a lot of enemies, there are factions forming, each with their agendas. unless we get to the bottom of this, we will have a repeat of the Mia and Kevi incident. worse potentially. an internal fleet war could compromise the deepspace tunnels. civilians would be at risk.”

she nods slowly.

“and your cover?”

“the colonel placed me as his liaison during my previous infiltration. that cover is still intact. no one in the fleet knows i’m a hunter except him.”

Jenna’s eyes sharpen. “you trust him to keep that secret?”

“the colonel trusts me.” you say it with such conviction you almost believe it yourself, “and our interest align for now. he needs stability inside the fleet even more than we do. and he knows that if my cover breaks, his own position becomes that much more precarious.”

she looks at you. picks something up from her desk, and says, tone leisurely: “this colonel of yours, his file came across my desk. behavioural health flags, mandatory leave, risk of harm to self.” she lists them like she's reading a grocery list. “you saw all that and you still want to go back?”

“he's unstable,” you nod. “that's exactly why someone needs to be there. someone who can report back here. someone he trusts.”

Jenna’s eyes narrow. “and you say he trusts you?”

you think about the way he looked at you in that interrogation room, the lie detector humming between you. you think about the tracker he put on your arm. you think about the way his eyes looked when he yelled at you to get out.

“no,” you say. “but he wants to. and that’s almost the same thing.”

Jenna is quiet for a moment, looking over the papers on her desk. wearily, she sighs.

“i have approved your request. you are right in that we need to get more intelligence on the inner workings, there is something they are not sharing about cores, and that information could be crucial. but i am assigning someone to support you.”

hackles immediately rise in you. a babysitter? “I don’t ne—”

she holds up her hand. “non-negotiable. Simone is already en route. she’s been briefed on the overall situation and she will handle logistics, comms, backup if things go sideways. she will also have the veto power to pull out if she deems the situation too dangerous.”

teeth grinding, you nod. at least you like Simone.

“copy that.”

“you two have tickets to the 1400 coelum express, so you can arrive and settle in before beginning work tomorrow. try to get your liaison position reinstated asap.”

***

apparently, you were never removed from that position. you’d laugh if you didn’t think it would end with you bawling.

***

the express is unusually crowded for the middle of the day.

Simone is already there, saving you a seat by the window. it’s the first time you see her in civilian clothing and, unsurprisingly, she looks like an off duty model. all sharp edges and sharper smiles, effortlessly beautiful, the kind of person who makes you feel like she’s already got it all figured out.

“looks like the dream team is back together!” she says by way of greeting.

with a plastered smile, you play along: “back in action, baby!” and drop your duffel full of your most boring clothes into the overhead compartment.

“well, i read the brief. real spy flick stuff in there, the colonel, the politics, the protocores,” she ticks them off her fingers. “and i’ll be your guy in the chair. and make sure you don’t do anything stupid.”

at least it sounds better than babysitter. you slide into the seat next to her.

she continues “think of me as your conscience. except loud and armed.”

the express hums to life, pulling out of the station. Linkon shrinks behind you. it picks up speed.

you don’t know if you’re running toward him or away from yourself.

maybe they’re the same thing.

next.

[rafayelnocturne]

mdni

prev.

the first time you went to grandma’s house after you found out Caleb was alive was uniquely awful.

you had just returned to linkon. you couldn’t sleep on the express. you hadn’t slept much at all since skyhaven. since the interrogation room.

bloomshore district was quiet that time of day, the kind of quiet that settled into old brick and lived-in houses mid-afternoon. the kind that made time feel like it was moving molasses slow.

you passed the corner shop where you used to buy candy with pocket money grandma gave you both for chores. passed the basketball court where caleb used to play with the neighborhood kids, his laugh carrying across the street, loud and unguarded in a way he never was anymore. passed every tiny place that still held the shape of him.

you had been here every week since the explosion. every single week. even when you couldn't get out of bed. even when the grief made your bones feel like lead. grandma would make tea and you would sit in the kitchen and not talk about it.

you couldn't say his name without your voice breaking, and she couldn't hear it without her face going pale. so you didn't. you sat in the kitchen and drank her tea and ate her soup and pretended you weren’t both drowning.

and then Jenna sent you to skyhaven. and you found out grandma knew he was out there.

that was the thought that crawled under your skin as you reached the front door. that was the thought that made your hand hover over the handle for a second too long.

she knew.

she knew caleb was alive and she didn't tell you.

you didn't know how long. days, maybe. weeks. long enough for him to send her messages. long enough for her to accept that he wasn’t coming home, not really.

she let you grieve. let you sit in her kitchen week after week, pretending he was dead, let you cry until you had trouble breathing.

you pushed the door open anyway.

grandma greeted you from the kitchen. there was a clink of dishes, the rumble of boiling water, the low hum of the old radio she used, the one you and Caleb chipped in to buy for her birthday when you were still in middle school.

you took off you boots by the door. put on your slippers. Caleb’s were right beside them, where they’ve always been, and for the first time in months the sight of them didn’t make you nauseous.

because now they weren't useless reminders of someone who was gone. because now Caleb was alive, even if he was different, even if you didn't know how to feel about any of it.

grandma made her way out to greet you, wiping her hands on her apron. her eyes were sharp, as always, and she looked at you for a long moment before she spoke. that look had always made you feel seen right through.

“you’re late,” she said.

“sorry,” you said. “duty calls.”

it was not a lie, exactly. there was a wanderer sighting near the edge of the district. nothing patrols couldn't handle. but you took your time coming back. you walked the long way. you stood on a bridge and watched the cars streak past and thought about how caleb used to hold your hand when you crossed streets, even when you were too old for it.

grandma stepped aside and let you in.

the house was warm. the heat was kind for grandma’s joints. there were flowers on the table, fresh ones, cut from her garden. she's been tending it obsessively since the explosion, like keeping things alive was a way of keeping something else from dying.

the floorboards creaked in the same places they always have.

"i made soup," grandma said, already moving back toward the kitchen. "you look like you haven't been eating."

"i've been eating."

"you look like you haven't been sleeping, either."

you didn’t answer that.

“he sent a card,” grandma said, not looking up from the stove. “left it on the doorstep yesterday.”

your chest went tight.

"handwritten. can you believe it." she said it lightly, but there was something underneath.

she nodded toward the counter.

you saw it then. a cream-colored envelope propped against the fruit bowl. sealed. your name on the front in handwriting you'd recognize anywhere. his handwriting.

your hands weren’t shaking when you picked it up. you've gotten good at that. can’t dispatch of wanderers if you’re a poor shot.

inside, the card was simple. a watercolor of skyhaven on the front, all spires and clouds. you’ve seen it in the tourist shops that littered the main streets.

if you don’t want to see me anymore, at least be honest with me. i can’t be who you want me to be. everything i do, i do for you. know that. tell grandma her soup is the only thing i miss about playing at a family with you. tell yourself i'm thinking about you. because i am. always.

- your Caleb

you folded it back up. you slipped it into your pocket. the edge pressed against your thigh, sharp and real.

“soup smells good,” you said.

grandma looked at you over her shoulder. her eyes were kind and sad and knowing in a way that made you want to cry.

you wanted to ask her. how long. how long did you know. how long did you let me sit in this kitchen and cry over a man who wasn't dead.

but you didn't. because you were afraid of the answer. unfortunately, some part of you understood, even then, even through the anger, why she did it.

he asked her not to tell you. and grandma had never been able to say no to him.

you sat down in the same chair you'd sat in for all your life. the chair beside you was empty. caleb's chair. the one he used to slouch in, legs too long, always kicking yours under the table until you kicked him back.

you wondered if he’d ever sit here again. if it was possible for things to go back to the way they’d been. if you could be a family again. if you wanted it.

you kept the card in your pocket. you felt the edge of it pressing against your thigh.

and when grandma put a bowl of soup in front of you, you ate it. all of it. because it was good, and because she was watching, and because you didn’t know how to tell her that you're not sure you'll ever be full again.

the worst part was that you were starting to think you preferred him dead. at least then he was yours. at least then you could remember him without this ache, this hunger, this terrible wanting that felt like your hands wrapped around his throat.

[contemptible-scoundrel]

fuuuck I could use a mysterious benefactor right now

[rafayelnocturne]

a/n: Inspired by Imperial Thronesong but takes place in the main storyline, with the exception that Caleb is the only one to ‘die’ in the explosion. lapslock intended. mdni.

~

Caleb doesn’t drink.

but he is drunk tonight. you shut the door behind yourself.

he doesn’t drink because he doesn’t like to lose himself. and because after a slightly traumatizing PSA in fifth grade about drunk driving - holographic crash simulations, a daughter’s voice screaming over the emergency broadcast - you ran to him with tears in your eyes and made him promise he wouldn't. grandma thought it was funny. but Caleb took the promise seriously. he always took his promises to you seriously.

that was before the explosion. before you buried his empty casket. before he came back as someone else.

his room smells of whisky. this is part of the new Caleb, Farspace Fleet Colonel Caleb, almost unfamiliar in his difference Caleb. the smell makes your stomach clench.

you watch him attempt to sit up, the spectacle almost pathetic. so far removed from your ever competent brother. his cybernetic hand is shaking, drink spilling out of the glass over his hand. does he even feel that? can he?

he hisses, and that’s when you notice the blood on his left hand. his real one. the one that used to hold yours when you crossed the street, back when grandma’s house used to feel big and safe.

“oh, hell,” you say, more to yourself than to him.

you have learned that if Caleb in a bad mood is anything, he is a gravity well you’ve taught yourself to navigate around, or at your bravest, straight through to the event horizon. of him. you know his ugliness like it’s your own. the way he can be cold, calculating, the way he looks at enemies like they're already dead. but now, the way Caleb drinks like he cannot bring himself to stop, as if he’s attempting to blur images only he can see. the drink leaves him angrier, contentious in a way you don’t recognise. the Caleb you grew up with was sunny, patient, steady. this one snaps. and you still want to touch him. that’s the worst part.

he finally looks at you, dimly, as if you could be anyone. as if anyone else would just march into his bedroom. or maybe, he just wishes you were anybody else.

“yeah, it’s me, Caleb. your sister? remember me?” you take off your jacket and drape it over the empty chair in the corner of the room. roll up your sleeves. “you called me,” you say, then, reproachful, “well, you called grandma and i answered.”

you don’t tell him how it took you a second to realise it was his voice, slurring, so unlike him. you’d been sitting in grandma’s kitchen, the same kitchen where you'd learned to peel tangerines in one go, where he'd let you cheat at cards. the call came through on the old landline and his voice was soft and raw.

“i need -” a pause. breathing. “gran, can you please -”

you don’t tell him about booking the next coelum express with shaking hands, about overpaying for the last minute reservation. you don’t tell him about packing the duffel in a hurry with stuff from your childhood bedroom at grandma’s. you don’t tell him about running to his house when the maglev was down due to an accident and driving around it would have added forty minutes.

you stand over him where he is crumpled against the foot of his bed like gravity flattened him there. the rim of the glass bumps against his lip as he unsteadily tries to swallow more down. it’s like watching a man drown himself. you can’t look away.

“so is this what happens when the fleet enforces mandatory leave on you?”

technically, you aren’t supposed to know this. the official report said medical sabbatical. but you were restless on the express, and your last mission taught you quite a bit about how to fake clearance in the fleet networks. a few well-placed inquiries, a backdoor you'd discovered during your dive into previous UNICORNS operations, and you had his file. redacted in places, but enough to get a rough picture.

Behavioural health disposition determination: Does not meet medical retention standards. Recommend immediate leave. Cybezin dose ineffective. Risk of harm to self: High. Individual displays signs of—.

the rest was redacted.

he ignores you. he raises the glass again, and it’s more successful this time. Caleb drinks the way he does everything else: determined and intentional, eyes open and aware. as if he’s provoking something from somewhere up high to try him. he drinks like he thinks it won’t hurt him. and comes back for more. you imagine he fucks the same way; without concern.

“get up,” you say. it feels wrong and misplaced. despite running here, you don’t know what to do with Caleb when he’s like this. you don’t know how to be the one to take care of him, instead of the other way around.

you couldn’t get used to it when he died. not having him to lean on.

and now he’s here, and you still can’t lean.

“get up,” you try again. you extend a hand to him. he looks at it, squinting, then tries to clamber to his feet without your help. pride. even drunk out of his mind, he has that. he reaches his feet and his full weight leans against you. the near empty empty glass slips from his hand, and it breaks into three big pieces and countless tiny chips that scatter across the floor like fallen stars.

he stumbles, gripping the collar of your shirt. Caleb is never this graceless. he’s so heavy, tugging down the stretchy material of your shirt till it digs into the back of your neck painfully. his breath is hot and sour against your temple. he’s heavy.

“Caleb. gege, you need to get it together.”

he doesn’t reply, but his flesh hand is on the back of your neck, his blunt nails making tiny crescents in your skin. he straightens up, wobbly and too tall to lean on you properly. you brace yourself under his arm anyway.

last time you did this, he twisted his ankle jumping the fence to get you an apple from your neighbour’s orchard. you told him you’d grow taller. he laughed and said there was no need. that it was his duty as your older brother to be bigger ad stronger to protect you.

you make your way to the bathroom, it’s just a few steps, but your pace is halting. all you smell is his blood and the whisky. iron and alcohol.

the light is bright and unforgiving when you turn it on.

like everything else in his new apartment, the tile is dark. there’s a mirror that takes up half the wall, backlit with stark LEDs. brutalist. expensive. skyhaven sleek, and hardly lived in. you didn’t like it when you first saw and you don’t like it now.

Caleb slumps down against the wall, his cybernetic hand reaching for a glass that isn’t there.

you kneel over him. the floor is cold beneath your knees, seeping through your sweatpants. you wet a washcloth and start blotting at his face. it feels like a twisted perversion of the usual routine of him bothering you until you apply your skincare on him too. his skin is clammy, too red in the cheeks and too pale everywhere else. the uncomfortable feeling only grows, as if this is something you should’ve never seen.

this is not the brother who taught you to ride a bike. not the promising young man who died in the explosion. this is someone else wearing his face, and you feel grief for him even as he sits across from you on the floor of his bathroom.

grief and something uglier at seeing him so vulnerable under you.

you take his left hand in yours. the one that can still be hurt. the cuts aren’t deep, though you don’t know how he got them, but they’re bleeding steadily. you clean them. you dress them with supplies you find under the sink, the same place you keep your first aid kit. the same place grandma taught you both to put it.

Caleb stinks of iron, whisky, his own sweat. male skin. this is the great Farspace Fleet Colonel, hell. he tips his head back against the tile and his throat bobs as he swallows repeatedly. you watch his adam’s apple move up and down.

“are you going to be sick?”

Caleb shakes his head. and then he keeps shaking it, increasingly manic, his skull bouncing off the wall. a spike of fear drives through you as you watch him, unsure how to stop him. his cybernetic hand twitches, fingers opening and closing on nothing.

“hey,” you say. “gege?” you reach for his shoulder, in an attempt to steady him. he stills and you breathe out.

his face screws up in an entirely unfamiliar way, lips going wide, like something that could be called a smile by the loosest definition. he started to shake under your hand, either in laughter or tears. you cannot tell.

“he’s dead,” he says through his teeth. “`he’s dead and i couldn’t stop it. he’s dead, dead, dead.”

you can’t move. the fear is overwhelming now, ice in your veins. did something happen to Kevi in the few weeks you’ve been away? “who is?”

Caleb only shakes his head again. he turns to the side, mumbling something, a name maybe, or a mission designation. you can’t tell, the syllables slip away before you can catch them.

it is too easy to imagine Kevi, his little body gone up in flames. the boom of an explosion. the heavy weight of responsibility and fear and grief.

you duck to the side, try to catch his gaze. when that doesn’t work, you grab his face in both your hands and lift it to yours. his jaw is rough with stubble. his eyes are wet. you can feel his pulse under your palms.

“who is dead, Caleb?”

the name he gives you is unfamiliar. a soldier under his command, you suppose. someone he lost. someone he couldn't save. you feel near guilty at your own relief.

“alright then,” you whisper. his face is still in your hands. “it’s alright then.”

but then he says something else. something that sounds like you thought I was dead and I couldn’t—

he doesn't finish. the words collapse into a sob.

seeing him cry is like seeing lightning in the middle of a sunny day. something that you know is possible but just shouldn’t happen.

maybe that is all this life has been for Caleb since the explosion. One long detonation, different battles fought along the way, the carnage still the same. the store. the Fleet. this very room. the fire that took him from you and spat him back out wrong.

you try to get his sweat soaked shirt off him, but he refuses to cooperate. limbs heavy, body solid even as he trembles. you sit back on your heels and watch the tears tracking down his cheeks, catching the light, dripping down his collar. he’s silent all the while.

“Caleb,” you say, voice traitorously breaking, making you far too quiet. lower your hands from his face, down his neck, rest them on his chest. and hell, you hate him.

his heart is beating rabbit-fast under your hands and you hate him. you hate him for letting you believe he was dead. for the months you spent grieving, the sleepless nights, the way you’d reach for him in a crowd and remember he wasn’t there. for the times you took a shower late at night and wanted him to dry your hair, only to remember that he was dead and that you can’t have him anymore. you hate him for coming back as someone else. for standing in front of you in that Fleet uniform and his cold cold eyes and saying “i did this for you”. as if it made any of that okay.

still, you run your fingers through his damp hair. you let him lean into you, let his hands circle your waist, let him cry into your chest. you remain kneeling over him, your knees aching against the hard tile. his tears soak through your shirt.

you rest your cheek on the top of his head. “whatever it is, it’s alright,” you lie. “i’m here. i’m here, gege, everything will be alright,” a truth, a lie. maybe. you don’t know anymore.

Caleb is alive. truth. maybe.

he stops crying as suddenly as he started. you feel it, his body going tense under yours, his hands stiff on your back, like he doesn’t know if he wants to pull you closer or push you away.

he must make a choice, because he shoves you away, hard. the cold tile rushes up to meet your palms. you barely manage to catch yourself from falling all the way over.

the first thing you notice when you look up at him is that his eyes are red-rimmed. the second is that his skin is still blotchy. only the third is the way his face is contorted in anger pointed at you. as if you did this to him.

“get out,” he hisses.

cold seeps deep into your body.

“you wanted to leave, so leave!” he’s never raised his voice like this at you. his voice echoes off the tile. “out!”

you straighten up, pins and needles in your legs from sitting for so long. your hands are shaking with fury.

being angry at Caleb is not new. he’s the closest person you’ve ever had, he knows all the wrong buttons to press. but this is unfamiliar anger. you feel ready to wrap your hands around his throat.

“what the hell, Caleb. it’s like i don’t even know who you are anymore!”

he nods his head, face getting that familiar i’m such a patient older brother look, like you’re just in one of your moods. like you’re the one being unreasonable. “you wanted to leave me. so i want you out.” his voice is steady, like he’s sobered up. it only makes it hurt worse.

“fine. if that’s what you want. and i always have to do what gege wants, right?” you spit out. “meanwhile you drink yourself to death, dig yourself another grave, what does it fucking matter, huh, Caleb? we’ve already gathered i can survive it. is that what you want?”

he scowls like a wild animal, cornered and dangerous.

you don’t know if you will ever be able to forgive him. for today. for the explosion. for the months of silence. for the way he looked at you when you found him alive, like you were the one who had done something wrong.

“look what you do with my love,” you say.

and then you are gone.

next.

[rafayelnocturne]

why did it immediately flag as mature… literally nothing happens in this portion they just shake hands

[rafayelnocturne]

if i write a sugar baby/escort reader x ceo who’s a little evil Suguru Geto and it’s a little too realistic about the sex work. don’t ask me anything. i contain multitudes

did it btw

[rafayelnocturne]

justice for tall!reader

[rafayelnocturne]

my problem is that i always always always set out to write a cute romantic a little comedic story. but due to who i am as a person it inevitably turn cerebral and melancholic. i aim for how to lose a guy in 10 days but land on past lives somehow