(things you said when you were scared | things you said with no space between us)

(Chad, on his way to his new—terrible—life as Human Debris, has a significant meeting.)

"Where do you think we're going?"

Chad blinks, slowly, dredged up out of his dull staring at the bolts lining the walls of the freight truck. Beside him, a heavier boy—shoved in behind him with no concern for their relative sizes, but he'd shot Chad's thin frame a look and straightened off of him as best he could in his restraints, unspeaking—shifts as well. He looks over his shoulder at the boy pressed against Chad's back, the one whose whisper, taut and ragged, had broken the rattling, jostling rhythm of the drive.

No one says anything else at first. The truck hits another pothole, and the whole mass of boys in the truck bounce and rock, the moment rough with whimpers or cursing. When they stabilize, crushed into each other anew, he tries again.

"The road's getting really bad. We're leaving Chryse, right?"

"Who cares?" the boy at Chad's shoulder mumbles. He squirms in place, trying to straighten his back.

"I do!" the speaker protests, and Chad winces at the volume, and the sharp outrage in the boy's voice. "My name's Dante."

Chad and the boy next to him share a briefly bewildered look. Chad shifts, resting his other side against the wall and trying to look over his shoulder at the third boy. All he can see is a smudge of red hair in the deep shadows; it tickles at his nose as Dante tries to turn and look at them as well.

"Can't you be quiet?" The boy beside Chad sounds tired. "So what if we're leaving Chryse?"

"I'm just trying to figure out where we're going," Dante complains. With their backs pressed together, Chad can feel the faint vibration of his talking. "Maybe it'll be a factory or something. That'd be better than getting shot up."

"At a factory you'd lose an arm and they'd toss you out on the street," the boy next to Chad responds gloomily. "I'd rather fight again."

"Wait, so you've fought before?"

Chad closes his eyes. The darkness sways behind his eyelids, lulling. The desire to blank out again rises up through him, a sticky, black temptation. Mentally, he gropes for the voices of the other two boys, trying to pick out the thrum of their words against his skin from the movement of the truck.

"The place I was at before. Got in trouble with Gjallarhorn and had to disband."

"With who?"

"Gjallarhorn. They're, uh…"

Eyes still closed, Chad mumbles, "Space cops," then breathes, opens his eyes again so he doesn't have to think about space, about endless stars, about his sister's hands resting over his on a console, her laughter gentle above him as she guides them through—

"Yeah, that." The boy beside Chad shrugs. "All the property got compounded, and the whole thing got auctioned off. Human Debris too."

"Huh. Guess you can't really just leave us collecting dust like you would a pile of scrap."

"Only because it's illegal to let us starve."

"Really? There's laws like that?" Dante grunts as they hit another bump in the road and his and Chad's heads crack against each other. "Ow! Dammit…"

At Chad's own thin sound of pain, the boy beside him huffs. "Sit up straight," he says, voice low and gruff. "It's more trouble, but you'll bump together less."

"Right." Dante twists around, methodically inching himself upright. "Sorry."

Surprise flickers through Chad at the apology, a brief, searching beam of light sweeping through dark waters. Without thinking about it, he hums out a negation, and tries to straighten up a little himself.

"Still, making it all the way through something like that—I'm gonna stick with you. What's your name?"

Chad looks at the boy next to him, whose face has gone slack with shock, visible even in the gloom. "A-Akihiro," he stutters, and looks hurriedly away, his mouth thinning in consternation.

"Cool," Dante says, satisfied, then elbows Chad, who startles. "How about you?"

Somehow, saying his name is much harder than explaining about Gjallarhorn, but Chad concentrates, forcing it out past his lips and teeth.

"Akihiro and Chad," Dante repeats. "I'm Dante."

Akihiro doesn't respond, still turned away—Chad can see just a bit of color in his cheeks, though it could be the thin slant of light from one of the hairline cracks in the truck's metal walls—so Chad points out the obvious, "You already said that."

"Well—I said it again. So what? It's so you remember it better."

Like that, Dante keeps up the chatter until the truck begins to slow.