A/N: Hello. If you're not familiar with Halo, no worries. I mostly just borrowed obscure location names and minor details of the Halo-verse. All you'll need to know is that the acronym UNSC stands for United Nations Space Command, and that the Covenant are a coalition of very angry badass aliens.
Also, an enormous thank you to the always fantastic raining-down-hearts for being the best beta ever and for being super encouraging in the writing process. You should go read all her stuff immediately.
Revival Part One
At one year old, Blair Sauveterre is a survivor, and a cheerful one.
Before she's old enough to know it, she's left behind the home was she born in, as well as a mother and older brother. On paper, the battle of Arcadia in 2531 was a victory for the UNSC, but to the colonists living there, it was a disaster. The Covenant struck Arcadia with a ferocity that left the lush, fertile planet full of ruins and debris, and devoid of a permanent UNSC presence, with all but one small continent completely uninhabitable.
As a pilot shipping people to and from Arcadia, Blair's father had been able to appreciate his home planet. When the first colonists had settled on it, over a century earlier, it was already covered in jungles and open fields flooded with wildlife. It hadn't even needed any terraforming. It was almost a miracle in its own right, a safe haven hidden in the blackness of space. It can't be called any sort of safe anymore, but for the Sauveterres, it's still home- what's left of it, at least.
When Blair is two, her father's arms bear her swaddled into Abaskun. The only remaining human settlement on Arcadia is filled with newcomers just like the two of them, and she laughs and waves obliviously at the evil eye the locals give her and her father when they trudge into town. The government is gone, destroyed by the war when the already thinly spread UNSC left to defend more heavily populated planets, and the distrust is tangible. Too many desperate people wander into town with the notion that they can take what they find, just because the law is gone. They're taught the hard way that the law is not gone, that those who gather here do so to work together, and that they won't tolerate anyone who brings any ill intentions into their town.
There are plenty of kids like her, and even more that are completely orphaned. They're mostly teenagers, since few of the younger children survived long enough in the wild to find refuge in Abaskun. Ragged and grim, they make trouble wherever they go, but no one has the heart to turn them out of town. After all, they're just kids. They remind some parents of the children they've lost. They're desperate people, struggling to put together some semblance of the life that was taken from them.
She's a bundle of giggles and laughs, and when her tired father sits down on the tired, sagging couch of the two-family home that a long and arduous search earns him, she's what brings a smile to his face.
"It's just you and me, Blair. It's just you and me now."
What was stubble on his face has turned into a thorny shrub, and his voice is rough and gravelly, but it soothes the little girl until, to his relief, she falls asleep. She's barely just started saying real words, and he's afraid his taciturn disposition will prevent her from learning to speak properly. He decides that if there's one thing left his baby girl is going to have, it's a good father.
When she wakes up, he tells her stories about her mother and the big brother she used to have, and it takes everything in him to keep from crying in front of her. He never does.
When she's old enough to start asking questions and starts wondering why some kids have two parents and some don't have any, he doesn't have an answer that she would understand. He can't shield her eyes from what's right in front of her, and he realizes eventually that he shouldn't. It still hurts to see her face scrunch up in confusion when all he can tell her is, "That's just how it is, Blair."
And still, without fail, her lips quirk up a moment later. "Okay, daddy," she says, and her smile full of missing teeth melts his heart. He wonders every day if he's getting softer with age, or if every father feels this way, or if maybe he just has the sweetest daughter ever.
Holy shit. Get a grip, man. If things go on like this, she's gonna play you like a damn keyboard when she's a teenager. He resolves to be stricter with her.
It doesn't work. At seven, Blair is unstoppable.
She races down the creaky stairs of the house she calls home with more energy and excitement in her every step.
"Daddy, daddy, daddy! Can I go over to Mifune's? Pleeeeease!"
Her father doesn't get through the two syllables of "alright" before she sprints through the door with a cry of "yippee!" whose pitch could shatter windows if backed by a more powerful set of lungs. She's finished the writing and math problems that her dad has assigned her, and it's a Saturday, so there's no cooping her up in her room any longer while the sun is out. He'll look at her work later and correct her where she went wrong tomorrow.
Abaskun is safer now, more established. Kids can run through the streets all day without parents getting worried, and adults can scout the forest outside the city limits for miles before feeling uneasy about their surroundings. Most of Arcadia's survivors have already found their way here- those that want to anyway. If only they had some more teachers, they'd have been able to set up a proper school, but at least her dad still remembers enough to teach her the basics. He tells her that kids should be able to read and write, and to work with numbers well enough to get by.
It's only in the moments that she's out of energy, having run herself into the ground, that she slows down enough to notice the unfocused stare in her father's eyes when he sits down at the end of a day. When she frowns and asks him what's wrong, he quickly snaps out of it with a smile that doesn't reach his eyes, and a few reassuring words that she's not mature enough to see through. He confuses her when she slows down to look at him carefully; the whole world confuses her, so she tries not to slow down. It's not really a conscious decision; she just understands that she's happier when she's running towards something than she is when time is passing her by.
She sprints down the block to beat frantically on her favorite neighbor's door with her tiny fists, and when the door opens, a head of short flaxen hair pops out from behind it. "Mifune!" Blair exclaims with arms outstretched.
"Hey Blair," the little boy mumbles, scratching his cheek and looking away shyly.
Blair beams at him for a moment before her cheery expression is replaced with one of impatience. "Well come on! Let me in!"
He pulls the door open wider and Blair's mischievous grin returns as she trots into his house. He replaces the door gently and follows her up the stairs to his own room.
Later, when the other kids tease him about being friends with the girl down the street, he just turns away and grumbles at them. The next time, when she's there, Blair hollers and points fingers at them in defense of her best friend. She doesn't notice that she's solidifying their accusations against him, and that for being her friend, he doesn't mind the teasing.
At eleven, Blair is absorbent.
She works with her dad fixing every piece of machinery left in Abaskun, as well as simpler things- pots and pans, shovels, zippers, shoes- anything. New things are hard to come by, and people appreciate her father's assistance. He's not really a mechanic. He was a pilot in what feels like a previous life, but he knows machinery and vehicles better than any of the other survivors. They say that necessity is the mother of ingenuity, so he learns, and since there's no formal school in the tiny city of remnants, she learns with him when she's not occupied with her lessons or scurrying around with the other kids in the neighborhood.
Oddly enough, she's one of the few children that still enjoy the taste of fried plantains. It's the most abundant foodstuff on the planet, aside from wheat and a strange Arcadian version of corn, and it doesn't fare as well as either on the UNSC transports off-planet, so they keep it for themselves. All the other kids complain about it, and her father welcomes the one facet of life in which looking after Blair isn't exhausting: food.
There's not much to add flavor to the bland meals, but once in a while her dad gives her a handful of coins and she pesters the old beekeeper lady until she can weasel a small bottle of honey out of her for the small price she can afford to pay for it. She drizzles it all over the starchy foods and eats them for every meal. Her dad tells her she's going to become a plantain one day if she doesn't eat some more meat or vegetables now and then. Food is the one thing they never run out of on Arcadia, and Blair has no compunctions about any of it.
At fifteen, she's talented.
She can operate any machine she sets her eyes on, including some that the patrols bring back from the ruins of abandoned towns, and she can do it before anyone else figures out how. Between her and her dad, they're repairing the damaged engines on the freighter that comes to ship the grains off of Arcadia, doubtless for the UNSC troops now, since the colonies that might have needed them before are going up in smoke and plasma fire.
The little colony girl is half woman, growing fast for her age and maturing faster, because life there requires it. Order is a harsh thing in Abaskun, and Mifune Sr. keeps it with guns and blades. When a man is caught forcing himself on a woman, and when another is found over the corpse of his neighbor, Blair doesn't look away as Mifune Sr. cuts their throats in the public square. That's justice in Abaskun: immediate and personal. Few dare to emulate the offenders' actions.
People whisper that Mifune's father used to support the insurrection, back before the Covenant showed up, but now he has no trouble shaking hands with the soldiers that visit every few months for food. Perhaps getting out of a fight with the Covenant with his family intact and his home planet at least partially habitable softened him up a bit. After all, it was the UNSC that had fought the invaders off.
The thoughtful, sandy-haired boy next door isn't little anymore either. He's no longer the shorter of the two, and he's always tripping over himself, his arms and legs longer every morning than he remembers them being the day before. He hasn't learned a specific trade yet, but he helps out in the farms, and when the farms don't need help, he lends his services wherever else he finds need, which mostly means at Blair's. Knowing he'd blush and deny it, she doesn't say a word about it to him, but her best friend has a soft spot for her in more ways than one. She smiles impishly at the thought every time he walks through the doors to the workshop under the guise of "helping out with work," and she tries to be there whenever she isn't needed on a job elsewhere.
They're calling her specifically now, separately from her dad, and while he grumbles about it to her, she sees the way he beams with pride when he talks to the other townspeople. She catches him staring at her sometimes with a mixture of fondness and melancholy on his face. When she asks why he's staring, he just laughs it off and tells her it's nothing.
One day, she doesn't accept his answer and demands to know what that look means. "You look just like your mother," he says reluctantly. She doesn't have any memory of her mom, but for some reason, the comment brings her to tears. He panics and tries to stop her from sobbing, and when she hugs him, all six and a half feet of his being cries with her.
She can feel what she had been robbed of, the life that was taken from her when her planet was assaulted, but the world still moves fast. She doesn't stop to look back, except to make sure her dad doesn't fall behind. She's wise enough to be grateful for what she didn't lose.
At sixteen, she kisses her best friend. It's a harmless thing, not much more than a peck on the cheek, but he looks like he's been hit by a truck, and goes red all over.
Her dad is there that time, in the shop, and glares at them suspiciously. Embarrassed, Mifune pretends not to notice, fearing that the older man can read his mind. Blair, on the other hand, smirks like she's just had a very funny thought she's chosen to keep to herself.
A week later, the sun is setting over the red hills on the northwest corner, by the wheat silos. They're walking home from a job, one that Blair had been specifically called for and that Mifune had just happened to find. She chuckles at the thought, and answers "nothing" when he asks what's so funny.
The light in the sky starts to fade over the treetops, an orange glow left in its wake, painting the darkening sky with the last brushstrokes of daylight. As she admires the view, a thought strikes her- the same thought she'd had about a week before- and she grabs his hand to hauls him off the beaten road. She knows every building in this part of town, and exactly what little side street to hide in. When they're just about there, he finally resists her tugging and he pulls her to a stop. They reach the corner of the dusty side street and he demands to know where the hell she's taking him in such a hurry.
This time, she leans up a bit and kisses him right on the lips. She stays there, eyes closed, pressing into him and clutching his shirtfront like he'll run from her if she lets go. He's frozen in place, and seconds pass in which he doesn't respond to her actions.
She steps away to find his eyes open wide in surprise. A cold feeling slips into her mind, and she second guesses herself, because she thought, she had really thought that he wanted this too, but-
Her fears drop away when he grabs her wrist and quickly pulls her back to himself. This time he's ready, and though neither of them has tried this before, they quickly discover that they don't want to stop.
They don't notice any passersby until a couple of young men only a few years older than them and covered in dirt from whatever job they had been working whistle at them and toss them mischievous toothy grins. One of them tells them to "get a room," and suddenly they both realize just how late it's become. Heated moments are forgotten at the thought of their parents waiting at home, and they both sprint through the main street, past other townspeople and back towards the south side.
When they're almost at their street, he yells to her to wait, and they slow down, realizing the guilt inherent in getting back to their respective homes this late at the same time, red-faced, sweaty, and panting. They both adjust their paces to a leisurely walk, deciding that getting out of work late and taking the scenic route on their walk home would be a more believable lie if they arrived home shuffling their feet lazily.
Determined to keep their activities unknown, both sixteen year olds endure a small interrogation and lie convincingly, they think, to their respective parents. When she falls into her bed that night, Blair has to stifle a fit of giggles. She replays the afternoon in her mind over and over in her head with a wide smile, and she feels so giddy with happiness that it takes her an hour and a half to doze off.
From then on, the pair makes good use of their free time, and is virtually inseparable.
The next time his mother greets her at his door, her first reaction to seeing Blair's face is a smirk and a wink. Blair is mortified. It quickly becomes obvious to them that there are no secrets in their neighborhood. While this fact is uncomfortable at first, they learn to take a strange kind of pleasure in the snickers and mirthful glances of their friends and neighbors.
At eighteen, Blair's world comes crashing to a halt.
She's at the shop, trying to fix a thresher for Sondgren, the one up the street with the cornfields. The damn thing is busted up good and well, but she's convinced the problem is mechanical, not electrical. She should know, she's had to work threshers often enough.
Since her dad disagrees with her diagnosis, he leaves for the scrapyard in hopes of finding the right parts to replace the circuit that he believes to be the cause. She tries to un-jam the obstinate little gears behind the tiller and wishes to be back outside again. When it's summertime, she craves the sunlight at any cost, even if it mostly means deliveries and threshing in the fields. Dad's not back yet when a terrifying screech pierces through the walls and the ground shakes under her.
Jumping up from the rusting metal workbench, she swings half her body through the doorway to get a glimpse of what's going on outside. Her jaw flaps open at the glowing starships visible against Arcadia's royal blue sky. Bolts of plasma sweep down on the growing city, and all those years' hard work rebuilding starts crashing down into the streets and squares.
Everyone is scrambling through the streets, running home, trying to find so-and-so please have you seen him I don't know where he is and I can't find him and she can practically smell the fear in the air, but when she gets her first face to face look at the monsters storming in from the east side of town, it doesn't matter anymore, because a sinking feeling in her gut tells her that nobody will survive this. She's heard about them. She knows what happened the first time they were here.
The thought catches her off-guard, because she never saw it with her own eyes, but there are almost no serious space-capable vessels left on the planet, and in lieu of a UNSC rescue or the arrival of a transport freighter, she knows there is no way off Arcadia. She hasn't seen more than twelve UNSC personnel at a time in her life, none less than six months apart, and there's no way in hell any of the four ships in town that are capable of space flight are getting off the ground.
Her calm is replaced by steadily rising panic, because dad left for the 'yard and he never came back. People are lying dead on the street, screeching and crying, and there's plasma in the air, but she has to find him. She doesn't make it to the 'yard, because only two blocks down, she finds a man lying face-down in the middle of the street with a burn-hole the size of her head in his back, and he looks awfully familiar.
As she turns him over, disbelief washes over her. Seeing his face is like a dream, because in her memory, her dad is a man that's alive. He runs a repair shop and he looks after all those kids that have nobody else- he's their dad now too, not this stranger sprawled out prone in the dirt. A life that important can't be ended this quickly, it can't, but his eyes are lifeless and unblinking. She pulls her hands away from his face with twitching fingers, suddenly not knowing where to move her feet. A high-pitched stream of gibberish causes her to look up.
When she does, a blue, four-foot tall reptilian creature with a breathing mask is pointing either an enormous glowing drill or a plasma gun in her direction, and she knows she's dead- except that in the next second, his brains decorate the wall beside him. She whips her head towards the direction of the gunfire that saved her and sees Mifune's father standing across the street. He holds a large rifle in his hand and he's screaming at her to run.
Reality finally floods back in and she moves her legs as fast as her body allows in the opposite direction of the fires and death, and into the dense evergreen forests on the other edge of town. A few others scatter into the trees behind her, but she doesn't notice them. It's only when the tears stream down her face and her legs give way under her at the edge of the shimmering, peaceful lemongrass meadows that her mind goes to Mifune.
She hasn't seen him all day.
She knows she can't go back, and periodically she hears distant jabbering of alien voices that make her knees quake with terror. She stumbles through the grasslands, and forests turn to jungles as she flees the destruction under the falling of the evening sun.
When night falls, the silence that comes with it breeds paranoia in her mind. The only sounds are the occasional chirping of crickets, and every rustling of leaves around her makes her jump. She doesn't sleep a wink, and she doesn't try to until the bite in her thigh muscles and the ache in her ankles prevents her from putting one foot in front of the other.
Finding a little nook between an enormous, mossy tree and a boulder, she curls up and covers herself with whatever foliage she can find. She closes her eyes, but it's hours before she can get even nod off, and her sleep is feverish, filled with dreams that shove her awake.
The sun begins to creep up into the sky, and she can't see it well through the treetops, but she can tell that the sky is changing color. She forces sore legs and feet to trudge over the increasingly rocky ground, and tries to keep tears from her eyes when her mind tries to return to her father and Mifune. She settles on remembering Mifune Sr. in her last moments in town. His eyes were steel, and his voice was a roar. If anyone could survive, he could. He's the enforcer of Abaskun's order and the most combat-capable man in town, and yet she hasn't seen him or anyone else since she fled. The jungle clears and she climbs to the peak of the nearest crooked stone hill to try and get a view of the town over the trees. What she sees stops her cold. A plasma beam is pouring out of an alien starship hovering high over the horizon- melting Abaskun into charred glass.
It hits her that she'll never see them again. They're gone, and it's real and permanent, and there will never, ever be any going back. Her home is a thing of the past, along with everyone in it. She has no way off the planet. They'll glass it all and she'll go down with her home. She almost welcomes the thought, because for the first time in her life, all of her hope is behind her.
The sound of low-flying aircraft is familiar and usually comforting to Blair, but now it sends her into a fit of fear and she scrambles back towards the jungle. She looks up to see if she's been spotted, but what catches her eye shocks her.
It's a small human vessel, the likes of which she's never seen. The exterior looks like it's been through hell. The thing mounted on the bottom can only be some sort of cannon. It's certainly not a transport freighter, and the man hanging out of the open hatch in the back is not wearing a UNSC uniform. In fact, everything about him screams foreign- black vest, some kind of denim shirt, thick goggles tangled with a red bandana around his neck, and unruly bark-brown hair flying every which way.
No matter who he is or where he's from, he's human, and that means that by some miracle, she might have a ride off the planet and out of the path of the approaching inferno. The ship is flying low, but the man doesn't seem to have seen her, so she runs back up to the hilltop and screams at the top of her lungs to get his attention. For a full ten seconds, she thinks the hovering craft hasn't noticed her and will continue on, leaving her on her own when she had just regained some tiny hope, but the man ducks back into the ship and it swerves back around to come to a floating position near the top of the hill.
Over the thrum of the engines and the jumble of rushing relief and twinge of guilt at the idea of survival, Blair doesn't make out what the man yells down to her, but she jumps to catch hold of his outstretched hand and he pulls her up into a little airlock, where she grabs hold of a railing and crumples to the floor.
"Jaks, nice to meet ya!" He hollers, and smacks a button on the wall. "Make yourself comfy, yeah?" The airlock opens to allow her into the bowels of the ship, and the man swings back to sweeping the landscape with what she now notices are some kind of compact, high-grade looking binoculars hanging from his neck. She crawls through the threshold of the airlock onto a bronze-colored metal grating, into a cargo bay inhabited by thirteen other people and cluttered with crates and barrels. Ten of those in the bay are crammed into corners or leaned onto boxes, some sobbing, some huddled together, some seemingly unconscious or asleep. The other three are keeping an eye on the people that Blair realizes can only be other survivors they've rescued.
Her relief and gratitude shrinks when she sees the looks on the faces of the three crewmembers. Two are furrowed with worry, and one looks downright furious. One has a pistol at his hip, though thankfully not the one with the boiling anger on his face. Though their poses are unwelcoming and she's on a ship full of strangers, as Blair drags herself to the side of a rusted barrel near the closest wall and leans her head against it, exhaustion wins out over fear, and her tired eyes shut with the closing of the airlock doors.
She jolts awake to the sound of unfamiliar voices in her ears and the feeling of the hard metal grate beneath her legs. First, she takes in the harsh, gravelly tone of a man speaking- one that, as she twists her body sluggishly to get a look at him, she realizes she hasn't seen before. Then she recalls the night before. Or day? She's not sure anymore. All she knows is that she's alive and that she has to take a piss pronto. None of these things contribute positively to her mood, and she scowls as she pushes her butt off the ground with her hands and forces her legs to support her.
She's acutely conscious of the fact that the four crew members currently standing at the end of the room have gone silent staring at her, and that one of them- the one with the pistol at his hip- is ogling her head to toe like he wants to make a purchase.
The older man behind him makes himself known. "Good morning!" a gravel-voiced man bellows through a thick graying moustache.
"Thanks."
"I'm Terrence, the captain of this ship. Lucky for all of you we happened to be in the area, huh?"
"Uh… yeah. Thanks." A moment passes, in which Terrence seems to be studying her face and looking for something, but then she realizes he's probably expecting her to introduce herself. "Oh, right. I'm Blair… nice to meet you." She extends a small, but firm handshake and the captain's palm is like leather in her own. Looks like he doesn't shrug all the work off to the crew then…
Feeling awkward, Blair asks for the nearest bathroom, and one of the other crewmembers- Jaks, she recalls- points through a circular passageway at the back of the cargo bay, towards the front of the ship, and tells her, "Second door on the right. Go and come back, don't wander."
Jaks has an expressionless face that looks older than it must really be. He has no wrinkles, but his features are rough and coarse looking. Still, he seems cordial enough compared to the pretty-boy next to him. Blair realizes that the handsome one with the choppy, almond hair and the slim, angular face covered by stubble is the one that had been giving out the death glare before she fell asleep, and she doesn't make eye contact, though she sees him following her movement out of the corner of her eye. She steps past the other… passengers? What are we now anyway? She walks through the doorway to find her second right.
It's a relatively compact bathroom. A sink folds down from the wall on the right, and a toilet is built into the wall opposite. Directly opposite the entrance is a narrow stall, hidden by a thin sliding door. A shower. She takes a minute to wash up when her business is done, and finds suitcases the color of cherries under her reddened eyes in the small, cracked rectangular mirror above the sink. She doesn't spend too long thinking on her appearance, the last of my worries right now, and exits the compartment to return to the bay she had come from.
"…slipspace drive is still busted…"
"…what's taking Jerry?...they'll be on us soon…"
"…have to make the jump soon…"
"…nuts?! You want us to vanish into the fourth…"
Their voices turn to whispers as she comes strolling back through the open doorway, and she pauses to look from face to face. They're huddled in a tight circle, and they stop talking altogether, looking over their shoulders at her.
Terrence narrows his eyes and murmurs, "Why don't we take this to the bridge." The four of them hurry off in the direction from which she had come, Jaks casting a furtive glance over his shoulder at her as he walked away.
Blair takes their departure as an opportunity to take inventory of the other human contents of the room: a small-framed blonde girl, probably a few years younger than Blair, shivering in the corner of the room, a woman with her hair back in a bun and a face that has to be a decade beyond her own, a family of four, made up of a mother, a father, and two little boys, a tall, freckled and orange-bearded young man, and two older men- one with white hair and frail body, and the other with a bald head and a belly that spills over his shiny belt buckle.
Feeling like she's somehow obligated to re-occupy her original seat rather than find another, she drifts across the room to the barrel nearest the airlock. After a moment, she perceives that the ship isn't groaning or rumbling beneath her at all, and it strikes her that they must have landed somewhere. Determined not to stay in the dark, she reaches out a tendril of a voice to the traumatized-looking twenty-something year old woman with the bob.
"Hey… uh… do you know if we stopped? I was asleep…"
The woman doesn't notice at first, but when she sees Blair staring expectantly, she turns her attention to her. "Sorry?"
"I- do you know if we've landed?" Blair decides the woman's mind is probably elsewhere, and that she shouldn't try initiating too much conversation. She's here physically, but the distant look in her eyes says that mentally…
Blair is surprised at the observation, as it contrasts with what she sees in herself. She can't think about her friends and her home and her father or she knows she'll break down into a sobbing mess, and she's not ready to do that. She doesn't feel safe doing that, not with these strangers. I should be miserable, and all I can think of is me… is this why I survived? Because I only looked after myself? The image of her dad's proud, cheery expression, a rare look he had only ever given her, contrasted itself from the hollow, lifeless corpse she had torn herself away from the day before. No. No. You couldn't have done anything differently. If surviving means feeling guilty, then so be it, but she is not going to die here. Focus on the now. Where we are now and where we're going. It's all for nothing, if I die, right?
"Oh. Yeah, I- I think so." The woman looks back to the floor, and she doesn't speak for another minute. She can't just sit around waiting though. She should at least make an ally- a friend, she corrects herself.
"I'm Blair." She musters the courage to quirk her lips up at Amanda. "Nice to meet you, though I wish it weren't here." She gives Blair a gentle nod in response.
"I'm Amanda." She doesn't smile, doesn't extend a hand for shaking, but Blair knows that under these circumstances, a few words are enough.
A few hours pass before a crewmember returns, and this time it's the one Blair hasn't paid much attention to. He looks average in every way- dark brown jacket, boots, brown eyes, short brown hair, and no immediately distinguishing features. He gives the room a cursory scan, before directing his next words towards Blair. The others are all still keeping to themselves or passed out from exhaustion, though Amanda and the round older fellow are paying attention. "I'm gonna show you to your cabins. We've got a few empty so you'll at least get to sleep in bunks. Follow me."
The short trek through the ship leads them through the doorway, down a small set of stairs, and down a ladder to four rooms. One looks to be occupied already, though whomever it belongs to isn't there. Blair peeks inside and gets a look at what appear to be spare machine parts strewn across the floor and stacked up against the close travel case next to the cot. The mechanic maybe?
As he climbs back up the ladder, the crewmember introduces himself as Mark, almost as an afterthought. The family immediately takes up residence in one room and shuts the door for privacy- they must still be coming to grips with the wondrous reality of their collective survival thus far. The rest of them divide evenly, with the three men in the room next to the mechanic's, and the women in the room next to them family. Each room only has one cot and one bench on the opposite wall, so one of them will have to sleep on the floor. Not wanting the floor, but neither wanting to selfishly claim the bed as her own, Blair sits herself down on the bench, which proves to be about the right length for her entire body when she lays out flat on her back.
The bits of worried conversation she had heard from the crew returns to her, and she wonders if it really matters how comfortable she gets, considering they're still on a planet in the process of being glassed. They'll be dead soon if they stay here. Slipspace. We need to get to slipspace, otherwise they'll shoot us down even if we're in the air. Blair has never been to another planet, and she's never seen a craft with a Shaw-Fujikawa Translight Engine up close, but her dad had explained the concept to her years ago. He'd told her how he used to fly grand transport vessels from earth and Reach to Arcadia, back before she was born, back when Arcadia was still a pretty tourist spot in addition to a fertile farming colony.
A slipspace drive opens a hole in the fabric of space-time, allowing a ship to hurtle through seven dimensions to resurface light-years away instantaneously. If only the damn things weren't so temperamental, her dad had told her, space travel would've been easy. As it was before, you could make the jump and spend two hours or two weeks in slip to come out to the same place. You could only guess if you'd need the cryo-pods, and the freezer-burn they'd give you stung like hell. And usually the place you came out wasn't all that near where you were aiming. It was like catapulting a rock over an ocean and trying to hit an acorn on the other side.
He'd heave a sigh and shake his head as he finished, they're a little better now, but you couldn't ask me to repair a slipspace drive for all the money in the Milky Way. I don't need the money and I'm not ready to disappear into the seventh dimension if I twist a screw the wrong way.
The younger girl finally introduced herself both to Amanda and to Blair, and Lacey. Once she started talking, she didn't stop, and the two slightly older girls had to calm her down from her anxiety that was spilling over into words. Their reassuring words are soon disrupted by a ringing crash against the side of the ship, and the groaning tilt of the floor under them. Blair leaps to her feet as swiftly as she can and trips over the small step that she hadn't noticed at the bottom of the open doorway to their room. Grabbing the rungs of the ladder in the hallway, she swears and rights herself, only to be shaken backwards onto Amanda when the vessel jolts unnaturally again, and stutters upwards with the thrum of the engines.
When she clambers through the hatch and into the main corridor, Blair catches the heated voices of the crew sounding from the room opposite the direction of the cargo bay. That must be the bridge. Terrence practically tumbles out of the bridge after a man she hasn't seen, and they both go barreling down a hatch on the other side of the corridor.
"We're too close to the fucking-" The man- gotta be the mechanic- wails as he descends.
"It doesn't matter, they'll rip us apart!"
"-planet, the gravity well will-"
"There's no more time to fix-"
Jerry bellows wordlessly in frustration and the walls almost become the floor with the impact that rolls the ship almost ninety-degrees. Terrence roar up towards the bridge. "Make. The fucking. Jump." sears her eardrums, and suddenly the space in front of her punches Blair in the gut and pulls her stomach down to her feet, and everything is still.
After an hour of waiting restlessly in her room, Blair's impatience to know what the hell is going on is put to rest by the ship-wide PA system.
"Alright folks," Terrence sighed through speakers, "here's the situation. We've just jumped to slipspace. The, ahhh… turbulence… that you experienced, was a group of Covenant banshees- little attack boats, you know, trying to blast a hole in the side of my ship. Anyway, we're a little banged up, but we're out of harm's way for now, and they don't seem to have followed us."
He sighed again, tiredly, and continued. "Unfortunately, our slipspace drive is damaged. Arcadia was just a pit stop, see, so we could repair it before it really malfunctioned, but the Covenant showed up before we could finish that job, so I guess it's lucky for you lot it was busted in the first place, otherwise we wouldn't have been there long enough to pick you all up... problem is, with the punishment it's taken on top of the original damage, we're not quite sure where we're going to pop out of slip, and the timeframe is a bit..." There's muffled speech in the background, and the captain pauses to address it before returning to the speaker.
"But I'm rambling…" An authoritative confidence returns to his voice, and he continues. "I just need you all to sit tight for now. We don't have cryo-pods, so we're going to be awake for the whole ride, which should be about two days, give or take. We'll be calling you up to eat when we have our meals. And if you need a toilet, you've got our equivalent of a bathroom down there, opposite the ladder." He chuckles, "Easy to miss, seeing as it looks more like a closet. Let me know if you need anything else. Welcome to the Nightfall. We hope you enjoy your stay."
The audio cuts out. Damaged slipspace drive… shit. In spite of that concern, Blair decides that for now, there's not much for her to do, other than get to know her hopefully very temporary roommates a little better, and maybe get acquainted with the passengers across the hall. She was always one to make friends fast, and not one to distrust or sit around on her own and introspect. She especially can't afford to do that now. She's keeping a tight lid on what she's aware she hasn't accepted as reality yet, and when she's honest with herself, she knows she doesn't want to. Any distraction will do to keep this feeling like a dream she'll wake up from sooner or later, rather than a nightmare that's devoured her life and planted itself in its place.
She chats with Lacey about her life, her memories, and she comforts her with a hug and a pat on the back when she her emotions get the best of her. Consoling the girl kicks her mind out of its own house and keeps it outside, where it can't look at the pain inside. She changes the topic when she fears the girl has settled down enough to ask about her own past, for fear that she might lie, or worse, answer truthfully.
Then she moves on to Amanda, exchanging fewer but more meaningful words about less sentimental things- favorite foods, work, the crew, and so on, until their mouths run dry and their fuel for conversation runs low.
She learns the names of the little boys, Ian and Charlie, across the hall, and introduces herself to their parents, Ruth and Vin Caposi. He was a contractor of sorts, helping design and build new buildings in Abaskun while his wife looked after the kids. They lived on the north side of town, and they agree that while Abaskun is too small to be called a city, it was big enough to get lost in if you didn't know your way. She's surprised to realize just how many people actually lived there- according to Vin, almost fifteen thousand people. Considering the way most of the population was spread out thinly outside of the main hub, with all the farms and fields, it wasn't such a wonder that she'd never met them before. She cuts the conversation short before they can get too personal, and opts not to talk to the men quite yet.
Sleep doesn't come quickly, but when it does, it's dreamless.
On the first day, meals are subdued and companionable. Everyone is just becoming familiar with each other, and worries about the fate of the journey are on hold while the ship plunges through slipspace- a neutral ground if there ever was one. She finally discovers the name of the pretty-boy with the perpetual scowl. Blaise Lemaign, he tells her with his expression sour as a lemon. He's the pilot and the resident expert on navigating slipspace. His features and his faux hawk haircut strike a contrast with his downer disposition.
She also learns the names of the other men. James is the white haired man, born on earth and made a life on Arcadia at the age of eighteen. The chubby fellow who owns the indecipherably fast stream English with a Spanish tilt is Pedro, a businessman who had survived the first battle on Arcadia and lived out in the wilds with a small group, including Ryan, the redhead with the gentle voice.
The family keeps mostly to itself, preoccupied with keeping the alternately scared and obnoxious children from whining about the unappetizing food and scampering around the utility room where everyone ate. A common room with a larder and a stove, she calls it.
On the second day, the crew is on edge- worried, it would seem, about the still defective slipspace drive and the beating the hull had taken. Blair finds her hearing more than adequate as she eavesdrops on their conversation. Blaise explains that the smaller the ship, the more stress that slipspace travel puts on it. With the hull integrity already compromised, a small vessel, a smuggling boat like this one, is in danger of crumbling to parts.
So that's what you do with a ship like this. The UNSC owns the skies. There are bigger ships for transporting goods, and nicer ones for people. You'd have to be either broke or hiding from the law to buy passage on a ship like this. And what the hell would you pay with? She decides she doesn't want to know anything more about the crew's business. While she doesn't gain any reassurance about their fate, she notes that at least the passengers are all friendly enough now, so at least one good thing came of their communal eating.
Two days become four and the crew grows warmer with familiarity, but no less anxious about their current predicament. They expect to be dropping out of slip soon, considering their estimation, but don't dare drop out early and risk materializing in front of an asteroid or in the middle of dead space, light years from a solid land mass and farther from civilization.
Four days become eight, and the crew grows colder as their nervousness grows, as if the fear is feeding on the very breath in their lungs, forcing them to remain silent and distant. Even Terrence, who normally tells tall tales and guffaws at his own jokes when the mood of the room grows sour, is increasingly tense. Twice, Blair finds Mark and Jaks having an intense debate in hushed, whistling whispers, and both times, they stop and stare blankly until she's out of earshot.
When day eleven rolls around, she enters the utility room to the sound of shouting. The first to show up for the breakfast that they don't announce anymore, she isn't noticed right away.
"-had enough for the five of us, but we didn't stock up for fifteen!"
"Look, it'll just have to be enough. If we ration it out-"
"Cap, we don't even know when we'll drop out. If we're not extremely fucking accurate, which I doubt we will be, considering this one still hasn't fixed the damn-"
Terrence finally spots her over Jaks's shoulder. "Enough! We'll make it last!"
"But cap, list-"
Instead of getting louder, the captain's voice went quiet and sharp. "I said enough. Or would you like to be the first to go without?"
Blair looks on in borderline horror as the crew manning their vessel stop cold, eyeing each other with malice. Mark turns around and walks right past her without a sound. Jaks remains impassive, and Terrence is solemn throughout the meal.
The ship falls into real-space around noon, but instead of relief, she observes unrestrained fear in the faces of the crew, and Blaise glowers even harder at everyone than before. She doesn't have to overhear Blaise and Terrence to know what's wrong.
"We're way off target. It'll take at least four weeks to reach Roost from here if we push the engines to the max. The fuel will last, but Jerry doesn't know if the engines will, and the food definitely won't. And considering the margin of error on this jump, in terms of both space and time, making another one would be suicide… our only hope is being picked up by a passing ship, and it's all dead space on our sensors…"
She gets the shivers lying on her bench, and doesn't notice Amanda and Lacey trying to get her attention, asking what's wrong until they physically shake her, concern on their faces. You have no clue. Neither of you have a clue. After all this, we're going to die. She bursts into tears, bawling hysterically and sending Lacey into a fit. Lacey brings Ruth in, thinking she can figure out a solution they couldn't, but she's wrong. Blair won't answer them, won't say a word, because they won't understand.
It's not about dying. She could tell them what she had heard, enlighten them, let them know that they'll all be decaying in the belly of a broken down smuggling ship soon, but to what end? It doesn't even matter. What matters is that it will all really be over- not just her, but her life on Arcadia, her home, her family, her friends...
There really is no going back now, because the floodgates are finally open and the only thing she knows are her daddy's callused hands, the dark hair on his arms, the sandpaper stubble on his face, his eternally calm voice, the afternoons and mornings spent together, his lessons and wise advice, and the soft heart full of unflinching love that stern words couldn't cover. She sees Mifune's short tow-colored hair and the blush on his cheeks when he was just a boy next door, remembers smell of his neck and the taste of his lips when he was more, and feels the warmth of his body against hers when he was even more. She's hurt by the joy leaping in her chest at the words they exchanged and those they didn't have to, and the days spent toiling and getting dirty and bruised and sore and utterly content with all that they had come flooding back through her mind. She can picture his mother's knowing smirks and hear Mifune senior's stern and reliable instruction on anything and everything. It all returns: Alice's pitch black locks that she always envied, Perry's side-splittingly funny pranks, Fred's pouting when he didn't have the money for the sizzling grilled meat at the street vendors, Cass's friendly embrace, all the little boys and girls giggling in the streets, the smell of the corn fields, the rush of the wind at the top of the watchtower, the evergreen woods, and the chatter of Abaskun's market at noon. All the laughter, the yelling, the joy, and the pain fills her heart until she's sure she'll burst, and finally, when it all clears, she's face to face with the brother she'd never known and the mother whose only face was her own.
She sleeps in Abaskun that night, surrounded by the life behind her.
Blair wakes to the sound of screeching and gunshots.
"I'm sorry, I'm so sorry. It's the only way." Bang. Bang, bang, bang. It's fucking Mark and he's fucking shooting into the family's cabin, and Pedro is cursing and the children are screaming and suddenly everyone's silent.
"Well that's that." Jaks. Fucking Jaks. Fuck you, fuck you to hell there is no way I'm dying here.
"Now the girls. But fuck, I can't kill a woman. That's wrong."
"You just did kill a woman."
"She was a mom. Doesn't count." Holy shit. They're coming. Mark slides open the thin, paneled door with the barrel of a scratched-up, gritty looking pistol, and Amanda jerks up off the floor with her eyes open in shock. Lacey is somehow still blinking away sleep and taking her time to rise from her cot. In his steady, nearly monotone voice, he speaks to them. "Look. I'm real sorry about this, ladies, but we can't all make it off this ship, so it's either us or you."
Jaks pulls Mark's hand down before he can aim his gun. "Wait. I think we can let them live. There'll be enough for to go around without the others."
Mark looks unsure. "Why? They'll still-"
"It won't come for free though." Jaks shoots Mark a loaded look out of the corner of his eye. "They'll just have to work for their share."
Lacey finally has the sense to screech in fear and blabber out to her roommates that he's got a gun, but Amanda shuts her up and keeps her eyes trained on Jaks. He can't mean… Blair tests her theory.
"I'm a mechanic. I'm sure if I help Jerry, we can-"
Jaks interrupts. "Come on now, Blair. Don't play coy. Jerry can take care of the ship on his own. I'm interested in another set of skills." Mark's bland face becomes increasingly more despicable as it twists into a smile. "I think this is fair. Don't you think so?" Mark nods eagerly. "We're not forcing you or anything, but we don't take freeloaders on this ship anymore."
Lacey finds her voice again. "The captain wouldn't do this! He'll-"
"He'll nothing, girl. He's not in charge anymore." Jaks turns to Blair and Amanda again. "You think about it when your stomachs get grumbly, yeah?" Turning to Lacey, he adds, "You too little missy." With a toothy grin, he retreats up the ladder with Mark right behind him, both stuffing their weapons somewhere in their jackets.
None of the girls move or say a word- Lacey in unadultered fear and Amanda in silent rage. Blair wonders for a moment whether the fact that her life in Abaskun had been mostly devoid of anything of this loathsome nature is because things this fucked up are an anomaly, an exception to the rule of human life, or if her sheltered, isolated community had been a single bastion of bliss in a world filled with corruption. She can't know for sure. All of her hope drains out of her. If this is all that's out there, she hopes the Covenant finishes their work, because all that is worth saving has already been destroyed.
To Blair, it feels like days pass by as they sit around, but she knows it's only a few hours. Amanda makes her way out into the corridor to shut the doors to the other rooms, which Jaks and Mark had left wide open. After the second door slams shut, she sees Amanda rush past their doorway to the bathroom, and hears the grating sound of vomiting. Blair wishes they'd have taken the damn bodies away, but can't think of any way seven corpses could be carried up a ladder.
She sets her mind to a less nauseating task, and calculates the risk of trying to steal food unseen. They'd probably rape me or kill me, but if they don't see me, we get to eat. She changes tack to thinking of ways to kill Jaks and Mark, as well as Blaise and Jerry, if they're cooperating with Jaks and Mark. No ifs. Assume they're together.
All three women are unarmed, and the crew has at least two handguns. Without the element of surprise, it would be an impossible task. Both men are probably as strong as Blair or Amanda, and definitely more muscular than Lacey. Either way, Jaks would also have a weight advantage. It doesn't matter. They have guns. Unless…
The idea hits her and she wants to pretend she didn't think it. It's too risky and there's no way she can pull it off, but it's going to have to work. The longer they wait, the hungrier they'll become, and the weaker they'll get, and they have no reason to believe that any of the crew won't just storm down and take them by force anyway.
Amanda stomps back in, looking more furious than sick, and sits on the edge of the bed with her head in her hands. While she broods and Lacey cowers in the corner of her cot, Blair's idea grows into a plan, and the plan sprouts details until it's covered in thorns.
She whispers it to Amanda, and for the first time in days, Amanda smiles. It's a mean thing, filled with hatred, and Blair sees the potential behind it. When she tells Lacey, Lacey goes solemn, and nods in agreement.
Lacey takes up a lookout position under the ladder.
Amanda removes her long-sleeved shirt and places it against the small mirror in the closet-sized bathroom. Blair removes her thick leathery jacket, squeezes in behind Amanda, and closes the door. She applies her jacket over Amanda's shirt, and Amanda holds it in place. Blair braces her back against the wall behind her, raises her right knee to her chest, and kicks straight into the center of the mirror. The sound of glass breaking isn't quiet, but it's muffled by the layers of clothing over it, and by the door sealing the room shut.
As Amanda peels away the jacket and shirt, shards of glass fall out onto the clothing. Only a few pieces clatter to the ground with a sound that sounds ear-splitting to the tense, fearful ears in the room, but after a moment of absolute silence, the women resume their work. Blair selects a long, sharp sliver of glass and tucks it into her waist right behind her hip, under her shirt. She'd likely need the front open for at least a few moments before she'd have a chance to use her weapon. Amanda selects a piece for herself and hides it away.
Lacey gives Blair a small "good luck," as she pulls herself shakily up the ladder. Not knowing which direction to shout, Blair just yells at the top of her lungs. "Hey fellas! I'm ready to work!"
Blaise approaches from the utility room and freezes when he sees her, his eyes red and his expression one of misery. Shooting a gaze up the corridor at Jaks, who appears at the other end, Blaise dashes into a side room. Jaks turns to her with a grim smile.
"Got hungry so soon? I really thought you'd've held out longer, but I can't blame you. We're running you a hard deal." As she climbs out into the hallway, Amanda follows her, and voices her willingness to earn her keep as well. Jaks only chuckles and says that Mark will have to wait his turn. "Can't have us both cooped up at the same time now can we?"
Blair gulps. The plan was to take care of both of them at once, and then deal with Blaise and Jerry with the pistols they would loot. We could take him right now. The two of us together…
She tosses Amanda a look, and Amanda's face is unreadable. The moment passes. No, it's all down to me. Either that or I get… we try again… no. I'll get it right the first time.
She follows Jaks to his cabin. He sits down on his cot, undoes his belt, but keeps his jacket on- with the pistol inside. Fuck. There's no other way.
"Come on then, kitten. Show me what you got."
With those words, an icy rage she doesn't think herself capable of bubbles up in her chest and seems to overtake her entirely. Kitten? Okay, honey. I'll show you what kitten's got. She peels her shirt off slowly and lets him get a good look at her semi-naked torso. His eyes focus on her chest greedily. You'd do this to me and to them? Hold us at gunpoint and call it fair?
She unbuttons the fly on her scraped, torn, and otherwise abused shorts. The things had taken a beating over the last few days, and she's glad that on the morning Arcadia was glassed, she had chosen to wear them instead of the baggier cargo shorts she normally wore in the shop. The fragment of glass is cutting into her skin, but with these pants it doesn't fall out. Without taking them off, she flashes a wide smile and jumps onto his lap.
His eyebrows arch in pleased surprise. "Damn. Looks like I made the right choice being generous with you, huh?" She wraps her legs around his waist, gaining a better grip to keep her in place. His shoulders slump as he reaches his arms around her to grope her, and a look of confusion crosses his face when he feels the object sticking out of the back of her shorts. Blair sees her opportunity, and she takes it.
The adrenaline in her veins is all fury as she jams her thumbs forcefully towards the backs of Jaks's eye sockets. It's a full second before what's happening registers and he howls in pain. He tries to push her off, but she's too well attached to budge. He reaches for his gun, but he's disoriented, and his other arm shoves at her blindly. He tries to stand, only to bring them both tumbling to the floor. She's almost pinned beneath him, but she wriggles out to roll him over and drive a knee into his chest.
Before he can liberate his firearm, Blair whips the glass out and drives it into the side of his neck, along with every ounce of revulsion she holds for him and everything he stands for, and in her mind she sees Mifune's father ruthlessly cutting down the few who had dared take a life or violate another in their town. Blood pours over her torso and his half-living eyes plead with her, but she drops his body down to the floor.
She steps away, a wave of nausea and dizziness sweeps over her. She takes a moment to balance herself on her own two feet, and snatches his pistol from the hand that had spent its final energy trying to grasp it. It occurs to her that she's never actually fired one before, but she exiles the thought immediately. She'd seen one used before, and she'd use it now.
She scampers up the ladder to the main corridor, only to see Mark round a corner with gun in hand. The instant he sees her, there is shock and disgust written on his face, and the barrel of his gun is aimed at her before she can raise her arm.
A crack resounds and a bullet flies by Blair's head before he has a chance to pity herself for her own demise, and Mark falls on his face. Jerry swings the metal wrench down on his head like an axe twice more before he drops it and collapses to his knees, trembling. Blaise darts out from the same room, takes in the scene, and approves. He stoops down to place a hand on Jerry's shoulder and speaks in the softest voice she's heard from him. "It's okay. You're okay." He continues like that, holding Jerry like a wounded animal, and Jerry covers his face with his hands.
Blair lets the pistol fall to the deck, and falls to her knees as well, heart pumping and incredulity mounting at the red coating the front of her body.
She doesn't think she's going to be okay for a long time.
In the seven days following, the survivors of the Nightfall give up all hope of rescue. Blaise explains that they'd had an argument with the captain the night before Jaks and Mark went violent, that they'd wanted to kill the passengers to preserve the food. "It's us or them," they'd said. The captain became furious and refused to be swayed, saying that all hope was not lost, that they'd make it somehow, and that had been that. Blaise and Jerry explain that their survival had hinged on their usefulness, and that they had been threatened at gunpoint to cooperate. Jaks and Mark had needed Blaise for a pilot, and Jerry to repair and maintain the terminally ill vessel until they could make it to Roost. Neither of them had a weapon of his own. They ration out small morsels of food once a day, but it's a hollow act, devoid of conviction.
When the Abundance makes radio contact on day seven, they're all dumbfounded. The prospect of actually making it out alive hits them, and they scramble onto the communication panel to respond to the flurry of questions that the crew of the Abundance asks.
As it turns out, the captain had been right. They would all have been saved if they'd only waited. It makes Blair want to kill Jaks and Mark all over again, but the two men responsible for the ruin on the Nightfall are already dead. Terrence, Vin, Ruth, Ian, Charlie, Pedro, Ryan, and James. All for nothing.
The crew of the Abundance is horrified at what they find, and Blaise's explanation does little to lessen their horror. They tow the Nightfall and give its passengers a lift to Roost, though they keep a distrustful eye out the entire journey there. "Malfunction of our slipspace drive," they tell her. "Lucky for you, huh? You'd have been stuck out here!"
Blair smiles grimly at the irony. Yeah. Lucky.
