CHARACTERS:True Danziger and Ulysses Adair; implied Devon/Danziger
RATING: PG
GENRE(S): AU/Future fic/friendship/
SUMMARY: No matter what else happens, they're still family.
NOTES: Thanks to Zola for the technical beta.
This was written for Yuletide 2006. The recipient was tommygirl, who asked for True and Uly in the future. The future we were shown in the series was fairly dark; I wanted to show a moment of light. I hope you had as much fun reading this as I had writing it. Thanks, it was lovely to "see" these characters again.
Apologies
by LillyRose
She couldn't sleep.
True Danziger turned over again, trying to get comfortable. Months spent in a sleeping bag stuffed onto a cot too short and narrow for her height had ruined her for a regular bed. The mattress was too soft, and the pillows were too plush. The bed was too big; she felt lost in it.
All around her, the house was too quiet. She'd gotten used to tuning out the noises of camp as she tried to sleep. Now she found she missed those noises, the loud and soft reminders that she wasn't alone even as she slept. Here in the house, she might as well have been the only one there; the silence was total.
She opened her eyes.
Her childhood bedroom came slowly into focus. In the moonlight, it looked like someone else's room. She frowned at the thought. This was her room, in her house, in Oceana, New Pacifica. The same room she'd shared with her sister Gillian since Gillian's birth. But in True's absence, Gillian had rearranged their room to fit her. True's bed felt forced into the space, and she along with it.
It was a very odd feeling. Was it only a product of coming home? Or did she no longer fit in here?
"Damn," she muttered her confusion into the darkness.
As if in answer, the window rattled.
Her room was on the second floor, and there was no tree, so there was nothing that could brush against the glass, nor was there any wind that would shake the panes. She glared at the window as if daring it to do it again.
It rattled again.
True padded over to the window, bare feet cold against the floor. The rattle came again, and she realized with a start that the source of the vibration was a handful of sea pebbles hitting the glass.
Someone was throwing handfuls of sea pebbles at her window.
When they were kids, throwing sea pebbles at the window was she and Uly's secret message to each other. Sneak outside, it said, I've got a plan. But it couldn't be a message. She'd only arrived earlier tonight, around eleven. No one knew she'd come home early except Dad and Devon.
Another volley of rocks. Whoever was throwing them was insistent. True swung the window open, the sign that she'd received the message and would come outside. She waited for five minutes to be sure no one was stirring and then gently closed it.
Her parents and the twins were light sleepers. Sneaking out of the house without waking them was a challenge she took very slowly. Ten more minutes passed before she made it out of the house. She only hoped her mysterious messenger didn't lose patience and leave.
She needn't have worried. Ulysses Adair was waiting for her at the old meeting spot. He didn't see her coming; he was staring at something in his hand. She stood and simply looked at him for a moment. She hadn't seen him in over a year, but he still looked the same. Briefly, she wondered if she had changed to him.
She cleared her throat, and he looked up at her. He smiled, hesitantly. She wondered if he was remembering the last time they'd seen each other. They'd fought about something stupid, she didn't remember what. She'd forgotten about it shortly after it happened. It wasn't as important to her as Uly was. Uly was her best friend, her family, her partner in crime. She could no more be mad at him than she could be mad at a part of herself.
She'd left before she could talk to him about it. That was a year ago. She knew that she had forgiven him. She wasn't certain if he'd forgiven her. Hopefully, the fact that he'd met her here meant he had.
"How'd you know I was here?" True asked as she walked up to him.
"I'm still damned sneaky?" She gave him a look, and he explained further. "I saw you come in. But I waited until Mom and Dad went to bed to talk to you because..."
"...because you have a plan," she finished for him. "One that would've gotten us in trouble with our parents and possibly the entire colony when we were kids?"
He grinned at her, and something loosened in her chest. "Yeah."
She folded her arms across her chest. "Does it have anything to do with what's in your hand?"
"Why don't you find out?"
He couldn't be too mad at her if he wanted to play one of their old games. She barely remembered the combination of fist bumps and over the hand switches, but her faulty memory must have been enough for him. At the final tap, he opened his fist and showed his hand.
Laying in the middle of his palm was a piece of Morganite roughly the sizle of a dewberry. True looked back up at Uly incredulously. Where had he gotten it, and why did he have it?
"Morganite stabilizes the spider tunnels, True," he told her. "Makes them dependable. The Changed discovered this by accident, and then our brothers confirmed it." That shocked True; the Terrians weren't known to give such secrets away, even to the Changed children and adults. She should have expected the qualification that followed. "As long as we don't share the information with the Colony."
True was lost. Apparently he had not lost his ability to talk in circles. "What are you talking about?"
"We can go anywhere on the planet we want to," he told her. "So, I was thinking." He handed her her heavy jacket. "Want to take a ride?"
True had forgotten how cold the settlement now known Winter Camp could be. The chill slammed into her the moment she and Uly stepped out of the caves. It only became slightly bearable after they began slogging through the snow. She shuddered, burrowing deeper into her old winter coat. She drew a deep breath, then watched it float away like smoke when she exhaled. They were almost there, Uly said, but they were relying on his memory to guide them.
"How old were we?" she asked him. "When we left winter camp?"
He answered immediately. "I was nine, and you were..."
"Eleven." She shot him a look. "So you're telling me we're relying on memories over a decade old to find this place?"
Uly snorted. "You really should lean to trust my genius, True. Oh look!"
True shook her head, then ran to make sure that Uly didn't lose a hand to the rusty sheet he was trying to pry from the ground. She knelt down in the snow to help him pry the makeshift lid up. It wasn't the best quality; they had made the hide away out of whatever they could find. The lid looked suspiciously like a piece of scrap slate from the old water hydration system. Seeing equipment she and her father had worked so hard to build rusted now did something funny to her stomach. True had to stop and gather herself again but by that point, Uly had thrown the lid aside.
True felt her heart catch at the sight of their hidden treasure. She couldn't help but smile like an idiot. "They're still here," she breathed. "We couldn't take them with us, so we left them here where no one would find them."
"Except us," Uly nodded. He sat and looked at the treasure for a moment. "Mine is the one on the right," he decided. "It has the rudder you bent on our last ride down the hill."
The old argument made her feel absurdly happy. She gave him a mock glare worthy of his mother. "If you knew how to steer..."she told him haughtily. Before he could think of a comeback, she continued on. " Mine's the one on the left, the one you made for my early twelfth birthday. You can tell by the shoddy workmanship."
"Hey, your father helped me with that..."
"No one's perfect."
They had several close races down the hill before they grew tired. By mutual agreement they decided to rest before braving the spider tunnels again. True was glad to see that Uly had included self heating and thick blankets in his stash of winter clothes.
They were sitting in silence when Uly asked her if she remembered the first time they sneaked out on one of their midnight adventures.
The memory came back to her clearly, in a rush of remembered excitement and danger. "The silver tree forest," she answered. "It was really pretty.
He nodded, the look in his eyes telling her he remembered as well. "The sun was coming up when I snuck back into my room."
"And Devon called us down to breakfast two hours later..."
"..and you fell asleep in your eggs."
True had a sudden urge to take a handful of snow and smash it into his smiling face. He would remember something like that.
"Some of us didn't have the excuse of a Terrian dream to explain why we were falling asleep at the table," she grumbled at him. Her feigned annoyance drew a laugh from him, and she found herself laughing too.
"While you're in a good mood, I want to say something," he managed after a moment. She looked at him in real annoyance; was he about to start a fight now, after they'd had such a good time? She thought he might be holding onto a grudge after all, and so his next words were the last thing she expected to hear out of him.
"I'm sorry."
She blinked at him."I'm sorry?" she repeated.
His mouth twitched. "I already said that. Seriously, True, I'm not angry about the fight we had before you left." He looked at her, and she could see the anxiety under the cocky facade. "Are you?"
She burst out laughing and he drew back, obviously hurt. She hastened to assure him before he made the wrong conclusion. "Uly, I don't even remember what the fight was about," she managed after a moment. His smile broke out bigger than before. "But I'm sure I was being a complete bitch. Because yeah, me."
He shook his head but didn't deny it. "I wasn't being very reasonable either," he allowed. "Listen True, you and I are never going to agree about some things. That doesn't matter to me. You're still my sister, my best friend, and my future field doctor, and I love you." True was about to tell him that his thoughts mirrored her own on the matter. But then he had to add that special Uly touch. "Repeat that to anyone and I will deny it until Dad declares his complete trust in the Terrians."
True rolled her eyes. "Yeah, that'll happen." She reached out and gave him a quick hug. "I love you too," she told him. She drew back just as quickly. "Repeat that, and I'll tell Julia you want an extra volunteer shift in the clinic."
"That's just cruel."
"Yep."
He shook his head at her. "So we're good again?"
There was one more thing she had to do. He deserved it for making her worry and for dragging her through a spider tunnel. And besides, she still owed him for reminding her about the eggs. Before he could think to deflect the blow, she dashed a snow ball over his head.
"Now we are!"
fin