MAY 3RD, 2191 CE
5:14 AM Persephone Local Time
For a moment after he opened his eyes, Kolyat's mind whirled with a blur of confusion. His gaze focussed on unfamiliar surroundings: trees looming large with outstretched branches casting shadows over prefabs and modular buildings, the bones of half-constructed skyscrapers jutting into the sky. The clean scent of grass and earth filled the air, reminiscent of the gardened areas of the Citadel, only without the metallic undertones of air filtration that permeated every corner of the station.
"Good morning, starshine. Demeter says hello."
Kolyat scrunched his nose, blinking all four of his eyelids in quick succession as his brain stumbled in playing catch-up to his body. "What?" His voice sounded even raspier than usual. He cleared his throat and sat up straight in an effort to look like he was awake.
"You dozed off again," Indigo told him, smiling when his bleary eyes found her face. She looked more comfortable than he felt, still sitting with her back against the armrest of the outdoor bench they shared, her knees drawn up near her chin. A datapad rested against her thighs, emitting a faint blue glow that illuminated the lines of fatigue beneath her dark green eyes.
"No, I didn't." He'd just shut his eyes for a few moments, that was all. Tensing his jaw to stave off a yawn, Kolyat arched his back and stretched the stiffness from his muscles.
"You did, too," countered Indigo. A playful lilt brightened her voice and her lips curved into that oh-so-familiar smirk. Despite his exhaustion, Kolyat couldn't help the twitch of his own mouth in response to the bloom of affection that warmed his chest at the sight. "You were making that wheezing noise again," she teased. "Like an old cat with a blocked nose. Making a real racket, disturbing the peace." She raised her eyebrows at him, her smile widening. "I might have called the cops."
"That'd be a nice way to meet the co-workers," Kolyat chuffed, trying to ignore the way his stomach flipped with nerves at the reminder of his new employment.
("- still got a place here if you want it, but you and that girl of yours will do good work out there, I'm sure." A rough human hand claps him on the shoulder. Blue eyes sincere, a rare smile creasing a weathered face. "You're gonna do good, son. I'm proud of y-")
Kolyat scowled at his wayward mind when the memory faded and he found himself staring at the coffee table. He must be more tired than he thought, zoning out like this. Reassuring Indigo with a quick smile when he met her curious eyes—she knew, of course, she always knew when his memory took him away—he turned and whacked the embroidered cushion he'd nabbed from her luggage back into shape. It didn't do much to allay the discomfort wrought by the thinly-padded bench, but it was better than nothing. His knees bumped the coffee table and his unfinished kaijal tea nearly slopped over the rim of his cup.
"Gods, my back is wrecked," he muttered, slumping down in his seat. He caught a residual whiff of over-sugared coffee from Indigo's empty cup and wondered if she'd slept at all since they'd left the Citadel. Probably not, knowing her.
"Mm, you've gotta love this cheap and easy furniture," Indigo said, tapping something on her datapad. "I mean, it's to be expected from prefab housing. This place is basically duct-tape and cardboard." She glanced up from the screen. "I kind of like it, though."
Kolyat smiled at her. "So do I."
"I'm glad." She grinned, warm as the sun that now peeked over the horizon—a brazen golden-yellow, unlike the cool filtered blue of the Citadel's Widow star. He suspected she'd made Demeter one of her preferred postings due to its similarity to her home planet, not that he minded. She'd grown up with open skies unlike anything he'd ever seen, while Kahje had been all controlled bio-domes and relentless ocean, blanketed by thick clouds beneath a seldom-seen blazing white sun.
(Sea spray stings his eyes, the scent of salt pungent in the humid heat. Elhenakir's Ridge stretches before him, a path of jagged rocks and tide pools leading to the cliffs -)
Kolyat looked back through the sliding door into the living room. Their still-packed suitcases sat near the front door, flight bags on the floor beside them. Right now, the place felt about as homely as a public bathroom, all half-assembled furniture and unpacked crates, but they'd make it their own.
("- sure about this?"
"I'm sure," he says. Uncertainty creases her brow and he takes her hand, fingers curling around hers. He is tied to her, as much as she is to him. "Where you go, I go. If you'll have me."
She smiles. "So poetic. You know I always wi—")
She'd gone back to perusing her datapad, absently tugging at a lock of hair. The familiar sight made him smile. "What are you doing?" he asked.
"Very important things. Incredibly important. Lives are at stake. Also the galaxy."
"You're still reading that terrible book, aren't you?" It was the new Blasto-verse tie-in. She'd bought it at the Citadel's spaceport right before leaving.
"I have to finish it. I want to know if they ever fuck."
Kolyat chuffed. "You're such a romantic."
Indigo grinned at him. "You know it. Hearts and flowers all the way. I swear to God, if I have to read one more line about this arsehole's glittering azure orbs or the heroine's hands fluttering to rest on her heaving bosom I'll fucking eat this datapad." She clasped a hand to her chest and gazed at him. "Oh, Kolyat, my eternal paramour," she proclaimed, "I feel the fire of our love in my oh so tender heart!"
"Shh." Unable to keep from smiling, Kolyat glanced at the darkened windows of the nearby buildings. "People are probably sleeping."
She reached for him. "Won't you direct your glittering obsidian orbs towards my heaving bosom?"
"Heaving bo—Did you just tell me to look at your breasts?"
(- silk-soft and warm. He gives them an experimental squeeze and she swats his wrist. "Hey, ow, be gentle! They are not stress balls, Kolyat -")
The memory faded, not without sending a heated thrill through his body at the phantom sensations. Ignoring it, Kolyat distracted himself by being annoyed at her triumphant smile.
"I sure did," she was saying. "See? Romantic!"
"Catch me when I swoon," he drawled.
"Always." Indigo raised her arms above her head, stretching them, then leaned over to drop the datapad on the coffee table. "God, I feel so stale. "
"Nine hours' travel— sleepless travel—will do that to you."
She answered his disapproving tone with an indifferent hum. "I'm tempted to go have a bath, but that might make me fall asleep." She gave him a coy smile, all tantalising suggestion, and reached out a leg to poke his upper arm with her toe. "Unless you'd care to join me, sere."
("- not coming in." Steam swirls against his scales, thick humidity pressing against him. She surfaces, perfumed bath water drips from her nose, long hair floating like autumn-coloured seaweed - "Your loss. I live here now," she says. "My legs will become a fishtail at any moment, and I'll grow gills."
"Waste of good legs," he replies, and she rolls her eyes - )
"I'll pass for now," he said once the memory faded. "Just don't boil yourself alive."
She pouted at him. "Aw, you're no fun."
"I can be fun," he muttered, then yawned. "Damn it."
"I'll help you make the bed if you want to sleep properly," Indigo offered.
"I'm fine." He eyed her. She looked a bit tired, with that slight sluggishness about her eyelids and the almost imperceptible tension in her brow. "What about you? You haven't slept at all."
Indigo shrugged. "I've had four coffees. I'll power through."
Kolyat frowned at her. Her insomnia wasn't as bad as it had been those first few months after the Crucible fired, but he still worried. Part of him knew he always would. "Are you sure that's wise? You've got that meeting today."
"It's pretty much just an office tour," she said, waving his concern away with a hand. "It'll take about half an hour, tops. I'll be fine. Oh, hey, are you gonna email Tuleni and Mieren? Tell them we arrived safely?"
Kolyat leaned his head back and closed his eyes, half-hoping he'd sink into the drifting sensation of semi-consciousness. Nothing like the idea of contacting his aunt and uncle to send him back to sleep. "They can wait until tomorrow," he mumbled.
"Well, considering it's about five a.m., 'tomorrow' is kind of 'right now'."
"They can wait until later, then," Kolyat said, rolling his eyes. Gods knew she'd argue semantics until—what was the phrase? Until some kind of livestock came home. Humans had such a weird way with language. He didn't think he'd ever get used to it, no matter how many odd phrases, anecdotes, and wordplay jokes Indigo spouted daily.
A few moments passed. Indigo returned to her book, and Kolyat looked out towards the sleeping metropolis of Persephone, wondering what awaited him at the precinct. The city had been a war zone, torn apart by a Cerberus incursion, an Alliance retaliation, and civilian infighting, even before the Reapers razed it all to ash. Smuggling, merc activity, wildcat miners, violent crime… colony life was nowhere near as idyllic as the promotional vids and posters made it out to be. And even after the war ended and the galaxy patched itself up, people still found ways to screw each other over. They'd seen it time and time again back on the Citadel after the Crucible fired.
(- wipes wetness trickling from his aching nose. His fingers come away red. Her firm hands on his back, his arm, trying to pull him up as his head spins.
A glint in the corner of his eye. Flash of light on metal. Knife in hand, the human lunges for the turian, almost rabid with hunger as he wrestles for the ration pack -
"Stop!" Indigo yells, and before he knows what is happening she is gone from his side and running towards th- )
His once-blacked eye ached at the memory as he came back. He looked at Indigo, half-wanting to take her into his arms to banish the memory of her bloody hands pressed to her side where the knife had gone in. He settled for watching as she switched her datapad off and put it on the coffee table, oblivious to his retrospective concern.
"This isn't going to be easy," he mused, partially to himself. "Change never is."
In the process of setting back against her armrest, Indigo stilled at his words. She didn't look at him, but her jaw tightened with that hard expression of resolve and determination. Kolyat had come to know that look on her face just as well as the half-stifled smirk that usually precluded some kind of joke, the almost sly look in her eyes before she straddled him, or the faint lines that appeared between her brows when she was anxious.
"'Easy' became impossible as soon as the Reapers invaded and Cerberus made the galaxy their fire hydrant to piss on," she said, a trace of vehemence at the edge of her voice that made him frown. She was so brittle in these moments, when her fingers curled and her eyes hardened and he wondered if the scars of this war—this slaughter —would ever fade. Then her expression softened and she looked at him anew. "Besides, what's that old adage? 'Just because it's a garden world doesn't mean it's a picnic'?"
He looked at his knees. Meeting her eyes was like staring straight into the sun. "That's true."
"I wasn't expecting paradise," she told him, almost snapping.
"I know that, I was just—"
She cut him off with a sigh and tugged at the roots of her hair. "Sorry. I'm sorry, I didn't mean to bite. Maybe I should go have a sleep. I just don't want to miss anything, you know?"
Kolyat didn't really know what she meant, but pushing her further didn't strike him as a good idea. "You won't."
The sun rose higher, the shadows getting shorter. Indigo stretched her legs out to use his lap as a foot-rest. Her gaze was clear and steady as she watched the sky, her face pale in the growing light. The image clicked in Kolyat's brain and he made a mental note to start a new painting.
She turned to face him again. "It's weird, isn't it? Going into dawn like this."
"Like what?"
"Backwards, I guess. It feels weird." She flexed her toes and Kolyat found himself glancing down at the colourful patterns on her socks. "I don't know."
"I know what you mean," said Kolyat. "Sort of." Something moved under his palm and he looked down again to see he'd rested a hand on her bony ankle.
"It's so beautiful here, though," she said. Kolyat followed her gaze past the trees and buildings, to the vibrant shades of pinks and oranges bleeding together like paint through water. "Reminds me of Earth." The words came easily enough, but her expression still darkened with the heavy weight of memory behind her eyes.
(- the reporter's voice cuts clear through the room, a grating reminder of the hell they lived in - "A city of four million, blasted from orbit. Adelaide, Australia is no more." -)
Kolyat gave her ankle a squeeze. He didn't know what to say, but that small gesture seemed to have been enough, for she turned back to face him with a tight-lipped smile. He'd never be able to make her forget the pain, but maybe he could ease it just a bit. Something told him she felt the same about him.
"Kahje never had this," he said. "All these colours. Cloud cover was too thick. You could barely even see the sun."
"So, this is your first proper sunrise?"
"I guess so." He paused for a moment. "There was New Mexico. We watched a sunset at the desert."
(- The sand bright with sunlight. Harsh coughing as lungs struggle for air. The thud of a body hitting the desert ground. Blood smeared at his father's scalp. His own voice, rough and strained, tearing his throat like razor wire: "Father!" -)
Despite the heat of the alien sun in his memory, a chill settled against Kolyat's scales. A strange hollow ache rose in his chest and clawed its way up to the lump that had formed in his throat.
("Kolyat, I've taken many bad things out of the world -")
He could feel Indigo's eyes on him; that careful, thoughtful, gentle gaze. "You okay?" she asked.
"What?" He didn't look at her. His voice came out like sandpaper. "Yeah, I'm fine."
For a moment he thought she'd press him further, but instead she leaned back against the arm of the bench and yawned. "Hey, there's a lot of Greek mythology on this planet, have you noticed that? Demeter, Persephone, even Cerberus… And 'Attican Traverse' comes from 'Attica', which was where Athens was in Ancient Greece. My dad would have liked it." She made an odd sound, a nervous laugh, and looked away towards the neighbouring prefabs. The weight of her legs on his disappeared as drew her knees up to her chin.
It might have been a trick of the light, and by the gods he hoped it was, but her eyes looked wet. Kolyat pressed his lips together, watching with ice stabbing through his chest as she pulled in a deep breath and seemed to compose herself, all tight lines and sharp tension.
("- can't stop thinking about it." Her voice comes out too high-pitched and strained, like the whimpering of an animal in a trap. She grips his arms with white-knuckled fingers, nails digging in, but he ignores the pain and pulls her closer, holding her to him as she shudders, her tear-stained face pressed against his chest. "About how they died, how everyone died -")
As ever, it was over in a blink, but the second after felt like an eternity as Kolyat looked at the Indigo of now and thought of the Indigo of then. The scales on the back of his neck tightened, unease sliding down his spine, but he didn't move, just kept looking at her. Her eyes downcast, she fiddled with the hem of a sock.
"There's also that farming outpost a few klicks out," he said when she glanced up at him, a hesitancy tightening her face and shoulders. "'Keeress'. Isn't that the name of another of your gods?"
Her expression relaxed, as did her posture. "It's Ceres . And she's from Roman mythology. There's a difference. Mostly in name, but whatever." She raised an eyebrow. "An agriculture goddess by any other name would smell as wheat ."
Kolyat chuffed, his translator spouting nonsense. Normally he'd say something about the antisocial aspect of making a language-centric joke that didn't translate, but his thoughts were far away.
So many dead. Even years later, even after rebuilding, even after everything...
(She heaves in a ragged breath, her next words, spoken not to him but elsewhere, barely a whisper, catching in her throat. "Please, God, please, my Mum, I just want my Mum…")
...some wounds just couldn't be healed.
(Father's breath comes in shallow, pitiful gasps, body seizing with each wracking cough, too weak even to speak to the gods -)
The cushions beside him sank as Indigo shifted to sit beside him. With that hollow feeling still in his chest, climbing up to his throat, he wrapped his arm around her. The coiled knot of tension in him loosened at her warmth, her solid presence against him.
("We're still here," he murmurs as her head falls forward against his collarbone. Her tears fall wet and warm against his scales and he tightens his arms around her waist. "We're still alive." -)
Indigo leaned her head on his shoulder, watching the sunrise. Warm, thin fingers laced with his as she took his hand, her unfused digits parting to accommodate his joined ones out of habit. The first time they'd held hands like this he'd wondered if it caused her discomfort, but (- "I have flexible hands," she says, and gives his own a squeeze, eyes warm with her smile -)
Kolyat sighed and nuzzled the side of his head against her temple. Strands of hair caught on the jagged edges of his frill but he ignored the tickling sensation and slid his arm tighter around her waist.
Indigo echoed his sigh and stroked his thumb with her own. "Hey." She looked up at him and their gazes locked, her deep green eyes swallowing him whole. He did not look away. "You with me?" she asked.
"Yes," said Kolyat, because he was.