This is how it starts.
/
They are prisoners here, in the cargo hold of the ship, so close to the engines that it swelters, that she thinks she can feel her flesh cooking below the skin. They take off jackets, socks, superfluous clothing, spread it on the floor in a tight pile, huddle together not for warmth but to get away from it. He is without a shirt; she cannot bare to take hers off, to reveal more skin to him than she should. He smiles and calls her silly, doesn't press it.
She is here for what they call 'insubordination'. Nineteen counts of slander against the commanders, slacking off during work hours, inciting acts of violence and rebellion amongst the other captives. She has no idea what he may or may not have done, only that he was here before her, and may be here yet when she leaves. She'd ask him, but she's afraid she doesn't want to know, wouldn't like the mental picture she was left with. In her mind, he is innocent, wide-eyed, enamored of the aliens and their enchanting strangeness. Would it change her mind if she could picture him running, running, grabbing a gun, one of the forks from the mess hall, anything, and doing exactly what she longed to do- wreaking havoc upon their captors? Would it destroy the love she still has for him?
Fear washes through her at that thought. Love is all she has. Just don't think about it, don't, don't think at all-
His breathing is growing heavy. Once, pressed against him like this, so intimately, she might have mistaken it for something else, some sign of reciprocated love or at least residual lust, but now she knows; it is the heat. All the same, she responds, turns her face into his neck, presses herself against him, one hand on his exposed chest, one on his clothed thigh, her body resting between his slightly parted legs-
-And they burn up together.
/
In the end, they take him out first, and it is agony. He leaves his shirt ("you can sleep on it, think of me") and kisses her goodbye, quickly, trying not to keep them waiting with such anachronisms as love, or hope. "You'll be out soon," he promises her, thinking as she is of Giroro, and how much he would do to keep her from death. "I'll find you."
It sounds so empty, that promise. But he means it, he means it.
She clings to those words, the memory of that kiss- not "I love you", but something close. An acknowledgement; this is the beginning of something. A relationship, a rebellion, it doesn't matter; maybe they're both the same thing, in a place so hostile to any human emotion. All that matters is that they will find each other. She repeats the words a thousand times in her head, after he's gone, because there's nothing else to fill the silence with but her own harsh breathing and the smell of their sweat, combined, on the life raft of unnecessary clothes that they had shared. She turns her head, presses her face into the suffocating cloth and breathes in his scent, giving over to sleep.
/
She wakes up on a couch in a clean, sterile, cold room. She can hear Giroro nearby, but lacks the strength to look up and find him with her eyes, drink him in. All she can do is stare ahead, and what's ahead is not interesting. There's a low table there, with a few chairs (bolted to the floor of course, even artificial gravity is not perfect in times of turbulence), and on the table is a glass of water and what passes for a hearty breakfast on Keron. Food for her, of course, but a table set for two. There will be a Talk.
From the immediate vicinity, "-told you a hundred times, you incompetent fool, I don't care what she does; the discipline of that one will be dealt with by me. You had no call to put her there so long, even after I told you not to- headquarters will hear of your insubordination!" Ah, she smiles. That word again. Lovely. Giroro hangs up on his contact loudly, smashing his communications device into a wall, and stomps into her line of sight. "Good morning, Natsumi," he says in a more normal tone of voice, though the anger is clearly still roiling under the surface. "Have you slept well?"
She aches all over, from dehydration and loneliness and loss; she got used to having him around, an arm's length from her, always within reach. They were shut up so long together, it seemed the only natural state of being, and now it feels like a limb has been amputated. Not a crucial one, maybe; something just important enough to notice the loss and mourn it without completely shutting down. But she repeats her mantra again, internally, and sits up unsteadily, groping for purchase, for bearing.
She wishes they'd left her his shirt.
"...Not really." Maybe this is a situation in which it would be good to be subtle, tactful, but right now she doesn't care. She's tired and thirsty and it hurts, everything hurts, and she just wants things to stop for awhile. Under Giroro's expectant gaze, she feels naked, exposed; he's looking at her hungrily, clearly assuming that she will be grateful for her deliverance, that she will take him in her arms and hold him tightly. Not so. Giroro is not him, nor is he a friend of hers. He is an outsider, an invader, her captor. The power dynamic may have changed, but her feelings have not. "Why did you bring me here, Giroro?"
Giroro seems taken aback. Good; he should be. Let him figure out her resentment in his own time, let him learn that one small favor does not make up for a glaring injustice. "You were suffering, undeservedly." A lie. She deserved every minute of it, except maybe the parts where they were together. She has not been a good enough person to have deserved that, but she got it anyway. "I saved you."
"They would have let me out eventually. They let Saburo-senpai out." The suffix feels uncomfortable now, but necessary- it would not do to say things that would really provoke Giroro, and implying intimacy between them would. Even if it's true, it would be unwise to say, and an uncalled for act of cruelty, of spite. For whatever reason, Giroro did a nice thing for her; it would not do to repay his kindness with a perceived betrayal.
Now he is shaking his head, looking at her with pity, like she is a child that must be made to understand- "No. Not for a long time, and by then it might have been... too late." Yes, she's heard the stories too, of unruly human prisoners who died in lock-up, and anyway it's not hard to believe. But somehow, it might have been preferable to this, to owing Giroro something. He is a good military man, and he knows tactics; he will use this to his advantage.
She is so, so tired. All she wants to do is sleep, and she tells him so. He nods, slightly, and there is an understanding that when she wakes up next, she will be back in her bunk in the area reserved for human prisoners- and Saburo will be gone.
/
Time passes, so slowly. Giroro contacts her now and then, and once she understands the pattern, she learns to count the days; one visit each day at what would be three o'clock in the afternoon on Earth. These visits are formal, with idle, guarded chit-chat that she often doesn't feel like going through the motions of. She doesn't want to continue the dance, but she has to; if she slips and falls, loses her footing even for one second, she may never get back up.
There is always tea and a charming assortment of biscuits.
Beyond that, there is little to do; the boredom is crushing, stifling. She is always on the lookout for him, and for her brother, but neither make themselves known. She has reason to believe that Fuyuki was brought here for Keroro in nearly the same way she was for Giroro and suspects Saburo was for Kururu, but is keeping his head down, like they all must. Act normal. Become a piece of furniture, a part of the scenery. Do not get noticed, whatever you do.
Here, originality is death- or at least something like it.
By her count, three Earth weeks pass before anything of interest happens, and when it does, she finds herself overcome with emotion, liable to cry out of pure happiness at any moment. On the way out of Giroro's quarters, the guard escorting her makes a show of patting down what parts of her he can reach, looking for weapons in her socks, her shoes, a knife secreted out of her private tea party, and she feels something surprising; the rasp of paper against her skin. In her own quarters, she removes it from her sock with shaking hands, unfolds it.
It is from him. There is no name, only the short message, "I found you". On the back is a hastily scribbled, "By 623". She balls the letter up, crumples it in her fist, holds it to her heart, struggling to contain the emotion that wants to escape. She feels she could die of relief, of laughter.
It would not be a bad way to go.
/
Later she finds out that he'd been tossed in lock-up again and almost forgotten, save for Kururu who sent someone unofficially to feed and water him. He'd taken the wrapped off his dinner one night and, message conveyed, put it back on the outgoing tray the next day. Somehow, he'd managed to tell Kururu who to send the note to, as well. Maybe he didn't have to tell him. Maybe they were on the same wavelength, after all.
/
She passes him in the line for food one day another week later. It is dangerous to talk. They stand a respectful distance apart, pretending to stare at the floor, the walls, the vats of inedible-looking slop they were about to imbibe, anything but each other, and whisper out of the corners of their mouths. There are no pleasantries exchanged, no "I miss you"s; there is no time for that, and anyway they can feel it in the air. She doesn't need to be told he missed her, because she can feel it in the air around him, in the way he subconsciously leaned towards her even as he was drifting away.
"I got the note."
"Good. I didn't know if Kururu would actually send it, I just hoped."
"That was... dangerous." She frowns in what she hopes looks like a detached manner to the outside observer, if there is one. "You shouldn't have."
"Did it make you happy?" As if that matters.
She blushes, tucks it away inside herself. She can be an embarrassed school girl later. "Yes."
"Then I would gladly do it again, if I had the chance."
Their turn in line, she manages to gather herself long enough to look up, present her tray to the server, and continue on without making a spectacle of herself. It is time, they cannot pretend anymore; they part, hands brushing together for the briefest of seconds, pulling away without a second thought.
Still, the ghost of his fingertips lingers on her hand all day, and long into the synthetic night.
/
Giroro knows. She doesn't know how he knows, but that doesn't matter. Maybe Kururu spilled the beans, maybe it's instinctive, maybe there were cameras installed in their cell- it doesn't matter. "You have a choice," he tells her, in the sort of voice people use when they mean you have no choice at all. "We will be arriving soon. When we do, you can go to the camps with the others, or you can come with me. Either way, you will not see him again- I will make certain of that. Please, make your choice well. I will not ask again, and you are a smart woman."
She knows what he expects her to do, and what the smart, sane thing to do is. She also knows that there is a wide disconnect between these things and what she will do, because she is a rebel, and she has hope. They have not stolen that from her yet, as they have her dignity. Stalling for time, she asks, "And my brother? What will happen to Fuyuki?"
Giroro shrugs, impatient. Immaterial, he thinks but does not say. "He will go with Keroro. The Sergeant has a soft spot for him."
She pauses. She could go with Giroro, yes. See her brother on occasion, know that he was doing well, be relatively content if not happy. She could have tea every day.
She could be more of a prisoner than she is now.
"I'm sorry, Giroro," she tells him, standing, her final answer. "I cannot go with you." And she walks out, before he can deny her that.
/
This is how it ends.
The ship lands twice, once allowing the passengers off and once in the camps to drop off the cargo of human labor. They stand in what was once a field, or perhaps a swamp, cold and wet and miserable, formed up rank-and-file in rows that stand perfectly still, swaying from time to time in the wind like stalks of corn. It is raining; of course it is. A small irony, brought to you by the people who control the weather; on Earth, rain used to be the motif of funerals.
She looks around, cannot find him or any other friendly face. Heart sunk, she hardly hears it when the command comes to march, but she does, bolstered by the people at her sides who take her by the arms and haul her forward. "Just a girl," they whisper, "just a little girl. Too bad, too bad." They all try not to think about what is happening to all the little girls back on Earth at this moment, or what has happened.
Their march takes them through a gate; now they are in another field, behind a barbed-wire fence. They stand in mud that goes up past their ankles, squelching into shoes, getting into socks. The rain washes everything away but that. That and her memories of the people she loves, and her secret shame at leaving them. She should have gone with Giroro, been with Fuyuki, comforted him somehow, not come here in defiance, in hopes of finding the man she loves.
Time passes, arbitrarily. The guards seem to like teasing them, seeing how long they can carry on before dropping. She stares straight ahead, but eventually the movement to her right becomes too much to ignore; she glances over, sees that the man next to her is moving, as though he'd just sidled into place. Her gaze corrects itself, she looks ahead; it wouldn't do to show too much interest. So many things wouldn't do.
And then, cautiously, the man slips his hand into hers, holding it tightly, desperately. He leans in as much as he can, and she feels his hot breath against her neck, sinfully warm against the natural cold, and she fights back fear. What if they're seen? Who is this man? What if-
"I found you," he whispers, and she seizes up, the fear turning to something she has not had in a long time, turning to hope.
She does not say "I missed you," because in all likelihood, she will miss him again. But for now, she has him, and that is enough.
As the cold, miserable day turns to night, she grips his hand tightly, like a lifeline, and never lets go.