Warnings for this chapter segment: Mentions of death/suicide. Lots of cursing and arguing.
Their descent to Britannic was smooth. Uneventful. They were let through the last checkpoint without the inspectors making a peep. Arthur was let out of the hidden room along with Francis and the two—spies. The women who had called to them hours earlier was there to greet them, informing them quite cheerfully that Britannic had a rebel-friendly loading dock, so it would be safe for them to stretch their legs and use the toilet from here-on out. While they were docked, though, they were required to stay in a certain section of the cargo bay where the loaders wouldn't be walking and where the ground was slotted to remain clear of transport goods.
They could not exit the ship under any circumstances, since the rest of Britannic was not guaranteed to take as kindly to them as the dock. They would bypass returning to the warp checkpoint and instead use the Britannic as a launch point for the next leg of their journey through open space and into rebel territory.
"That will take months," Francis said, his forehead creasing. He stood beside Arthur, readjusting his clothes. They had crinkled from being sat on for so long. Alfred and Matthew were nearby, stretching their legs and leaning on each other instead of paying much attention to the conversation.
They knew about this beforehand, Arthur reasoned. He swallowed a heavy lump in his throat, and looked back to Francis, who had also known about this, whatever it was, beforehand.
"It will take weeks, not months," the woman said, her voice gentle but giving no indication she would tolerate arguing. "The rebellion may not be as technologically advanced as the heart of the Empire, Mr. Bonnefoy, but that does not mean we are stagnant."
A second voice chimed in to agree with her. A young man with slicked hair. He said, "It's unwise to underestimate your enemy, no matter how seemingly small and helpless."
Francis did not respond to that line of conversation. Instead, he asked their names.
The woman was Meena, and the man was Rishi. They owned this Britannic cargo ship, they explained. Had for years. Partners in business and banditry.
Now that he had a good look at them Arthur decided, in his opinion, Rishi and Meena were far too stunning to be running an intersystem transport. Someone else might have disagreed, but they looked like the sort of people who would rather be outside on a hot day taking long walks arm-in-arm, or inside during late nights, dancing and sampling all the bite-sized delicacies that Pompeii buffets had to offer.
Meena wore a bright red outfit that made her stand out among the otherwise dull colors of the ship, making her seem out of place on the craft, even as she climbed the catwalk stairs and slid her arm into the inner guts of the engine room to tinker whenever there was a particularly unfortunate sounding clunk. Rishi, on the other hand, wore a dark but pressed suit and scampered through the ship with almost a skip in his step, darting around any crew members that happened to be in his way as he went from one end of the vessel to another, chatting the whole way, checking and double checking this and that and but-Reiner-said-no-no-no-do-the-other-thing-pull-the-other-lever.
They had dark skin and warm hands, and though they looked and dressed quite differently, they moved and gestured with such familiarity that Arthur wasn't sure if he was looking at siblings, close friends, or lovers. They did not say, and no one but Arthur thought to ask. Arthur was not about to ask.
Meena offered them food and water, telling them to take their fill, for within fifteen minutes they would be docked on the ERS Britannic and their cargo belly filled up to the brim with all the supplies they would need.
With that, the four spread out to explore the cargo bay which would be their new home for the next few weeks. There were mattresses which could be brought out of storage to make things more comfortable, but the crew cabins were already filled up, and so the only places remaining for the four to sleep would be interspaced in the cargo bay and the hidden vented room. After hours cramped in there without the comfort of mattresses, though, all four of them were using the exploration as an excuse to stretch their legs.
The cargo bay was in the center of the ship: a large, round belly squashed between the hexagonal thrusters and the observation deck. The craft had a very distinct shape, designed both to indicate its status as a carrier from the outside, but also to hold as much as physically possible. It was unapologetically ugly, its metal panels mismatched in color and its bolts bare for anyone to see. Wires and pipes crisscrossed along the ceiling. A woven catwalk was the apparent transportation method of choice. The place was built for flexibility, Arthur supposed, for he could feel the sway in the ship even as he stood. For a short while he watched the hanging lights swing in slow, small circles as they dangled from the ceiling.
Arthur slipped away from the other three with a small food packet and a canteen of water. He found a corner of their allowed space in the cargo section and sat there alone with his back against the wall, his neck tilted back to watch the ship's workers shuffle about on the catwalk above his head. He avoided eye contact with anyone, especially Francis and the two wh—spies on the other side of the bay. The belly of the ship rattled with spare parts and loose screws, and the sound of it comforted Arthur, what comfort he could accept.
He was still in his bright military dress. His epaulets were tangled and his medals were crooked on his coat. At some point he had lost his cap, which he rarely ever wore anyway. In his breast pocket, the napkin of food from that last party on Pompeii was pressed against his chest. He pulled it out and laid it in front of him at his feet, next to the small ration packet and canteen.
In comparison to the napkin of slightly squished Pompeii finger food next to it, the rations resembled dogfood more than anything else. The pieces were small and cubic in shape, about the size of a thumbnail; their colors seemed restricted to a very narrow palette of colors, all of which began with the adjectives 'dusty' or 'faded.' The majority of the morsels were some shade of tan, but others were vaguely pinkish or verging on a milky white. Some were the faded green of dangerous water. None were blue or black. One was dark yellow and hard, wrapped in paper, with microscopic instructions written the side, telling Arthur to dissolve it in heated water for a broth.
Arthur sat there motionless, looking at the two piles of food, trying to not let the 'what if's infiltrate his thoughts.
He was kidnapped.
That's what it was. No two-ways about it.
He had been abducted. Taken without his awareness or consent. Once they landed, if Arthur let his foot rise again off Britannic soil, he would never go back to his apartment in Pompeii.
It felt like an extraordinarily silly thought after he thought it. Initially, it had struck him as a cold bolt of terror, straight into his metal stomach. He was being abducted. He was being abducted. He'd never get to go back to his apartment again. He was—
Arthur swallowed deeply and took several deep breaths. He tried to clear his head and think. What did he care about that apartment?
He cared the world about that apartment. It was the closest he'd felt to happiness, laying there ignorant with Matthew in his arms and Francis in the other room. He'd wanted to die in that apartment.
He thought deeper.
He was leaving his mother behind on Pompeii. She wouldn't know what happened to him. She would screech and throw a tantrum, demanding he be found: her precious baby child—not that the Empire would need encouragement to look for him, but his mother would scream for it anyway. As the Caer of a small, backwater world, she had fought for her influence and she had treasured each of her four sons dear as life itself, and she would be devastated with worry for a son she had already almost lost once. Perhaps?
Arthur hadn't seen his mother in over a year, though he knew she lived on Pompeii not a few miles away in the heart of the capital. He hadn't called, but she hadn't either. When she worked, she threw herself into it with such ferocity that she could go on ignoring those she cared about for, for—
There was a story he was told when he was seven. The second oldest of his brothers had been seven once too when he and collapsed at the edge of Britannic's Long Pier, plummeting into the oceans many meters below. He was dragged to the surface by—Arthur couldn't remember who—but it was several days before their mother swooped into his room and scared the death right out of him. For weeks, Arthur and his brother Llewellyn had taken to diving off the pier to see if their mother noticed, while their two oldest siblings supervised.
Now, he was in his twenties and farther away from her than he had been in his life, mere kilometers above his home planet's surface. She probably wouldn't notice he was gone for a while unless he dragged himself to her attention, and he could think of no real way to do that aside from hijacking the communication network. By the time the message reached the consulate on Pompeii, they would be hours or days behind the carrier ship.
He would miss Pompeii's food. He could already see that by looking at the rations before him. He would miss the food, and the soft beds, and the way a Jacuzzi bath felt around his ports. He would miss Matthew.
Matthew was on the other side of the cargo bay, sitting beside his brother, but Arthur had never felt more distant from the man ever since that first night in the hospital after trying to die.
Arthur took a slow breath and wrapped his food up in his napkin once more. He put a cap back on his ration packet. His movements felt sluggish and disconnected. He had been due for a checkup from Ludwig, soon—perhaps he should inform Francis about the apparent lag time between Arthur's desire to move and his actual movement.
But he didn't want to.
Francis had been the one to drag him onto this ship in the first place. The one to arrange this whole fiasco. Now, they would all probably die once the Empire caught up—all of them would die except Arthur, at least, because if they were willing to bring him back to life after a suicide, they would surely do it after a kidnapping—and it would be Arthur's fault just as much as Francis'.
No, Arthur decided. No, he did not want Francis poking about in his chest cavity for repairs right now. If he wanted anything, if he wanted to stay and plead anyone's case, he would have to escape onto Britannic's surface and contact the Empire through them.
He would have to think of how to phrase things to prevent everyone from being executed as traitors—that would mean saying Francis, Matthew, and Alfred were also kidnapped by the rebels alongside him, rather than plotting alongside the rebels. That would mean sending the Britannic rebels and the entire carrier ship to the dogs, unless he managed to convince someone that the ship was blackmailed into it, which meant Meena and Rishi—
The sound of rain against the metal shell of the ship was faint, but Arthur was still able to identify the long-faded sound of his childhood. It stilled his thoughts, allowing something to rise up from his gut and fill his mind.
He did not want to be responsible for anymore deaths.
The cargo ship landed on the Britannic docks with a rumble. Arthur did not move a muscle from his seat. He breathed slowly and deeply, closing his eyes and trying to focus himself inwards, forcing himself to be calm. It wasn't much, but it was something. Focusing on his breathing kept him grounded as he heard the hatch doors opening up and smelled the faint old smell of ozone that perforated the entire planet.
He hadn't realized Britannic smelled of anything before he had left. Ozone, and metal, and salt.
The first of many feet walked past him, shuffling quickly by without a break in step. Arthur kept his eyes very much shut. The next few sets of feet hurried by, the tankards and barrels of water being rolled along with them never even coming close to his spot. He ignored them just as they ignored him. This was his last chance to run if he wanted it. If he was going to do it, the time would be now.
A hand fell on Arthur's shoulder. He jumped and jerked away his eyes snapping open wide as he twisted around to stare up at whoever had approached him without his notice.
Francis looked just as startled as Arthur felt, pulling his hand back and stiffening his shoulders. "Are you all right?" he said.
Arthur had lost his breathing pattern. He took a moment to try and establish it again. "I'm fine. Thanks. You just startled me."
Francis frowned. After a moment, he bent his knees and sat down beside Arthur, leaning back against the patchwork walls of the ship. "You don't look fine. You've hardly said a word since we got here, and now you're sitting all on your own. What is it?"
"I'm just tired," Arthur said. "I didn't sleep well on the floor."
Francis nodded. "No one did."
"And I've been kidnapped," Arthur added, almost unthinkingly, but 'unthinkingly' might have been a lie. "I'm not really happy about that."
He was expecting Francis to protest the choice of words, but the most that happened was Francis' jaw tightening and his lips pressing together.
"You're safer here, now," he said. "Everyone is."
"You're all going to die when the Empire comes for me," Arthur said, unwilling to look at Francis and trying very hard to not let his voice quaver as he spoke. "If not in the crossfire then from execution and torture, later. You know they do it."
"I know," Francis said. "But in the meantime, there will be no more Angel Assaults, and that's the best thing we can ask for right now."
"What if the 'meantime' only lasts for a short time?" Arthur said. "We don't know how long this will work."
"We'll figure that out if the time comes."
"When," Arthur said. "They will come."
Francis hummed and ran a hand through Arthur's hair. "Don't think about it much. Now let's watch them load the cargo. Have you ever seen this?"
"A long time ago," Arthur said, but he stood up alongside Francis and was shuffled back over to where Alfred and Matthew were standing, leaning against the wall, watching Meena and Rishi help direct the crates and tankards being stacked and rolled onto the ship. Men and women swarmed the previously bare cargo bay, moving barriers around and filling up empty space with everything they could. They wore gray overalls covered in stains. Their collars were patterned and they had the logo of the docks stitched onto their left breasts, declaring their work area to everyone who knew the logo.
Arthur remembered, faintly, smatterings of things he'd learned of his home before he was moved to the Academy. He remembered the armbands, the folds of the uniform collar, the cool mist outside his residence block on calm mornings. The small integrated school classes teaching them about engineered desalination. The day his two oldest brothers were told they weren't going to school any longer, armbands in hand. Arthur remembered the long face of the man who stalked right through the chaos of the loading dock, hailing Meena and Rishi to speak.
Arthur's second oldest brother had grown in the last decade.
Aiden was his name.
He was lanky and gaunt, his complexion marred by more freckles than there was water in the ocean. His hair was long and red, simultaneously damp and greasy from the constant mist and rain. His eyes were bright green, and almost as though he could sense Arthur's attention, Aiden's bright green eyes flickered over and found him.
Arthur did not flinch, though he felt somewhat like this was a situation where he should have. Instead, he stood very still, staring back at his brother with neither the willpower nor ability to look away.
Aiden continued to talk to Rishi and Meena, but his gaze stayed level on Arthur.
"Arthur?" Francis said, shaking Arthur's shoulder. Francis tilted his head up to look at who it was Arthur was so intently focused on. His eyes narrowed as he tried to remember Aiden—Francis had last seen any of Arthur's brothers at their graduation three years prior, but it seemed as though he still remembered Aiden well enough to place his face. "Is that?"
"Aiden," Arthur said, his voice as steady as he could keep it. "Second brother. In charge of cargo transport both on and off Britannic."
"I guess he's… a rebel? Or at least aware of them," Francis said, something odd and a little bit like awe in his voice. "When we were at school, do you think…?"
"I don't know," Arthur said.
"Do you want to talk to him?" Francis said.
"I don't know."
Arthur's brother looked away first, turning back to Rishi and pointing up at the top of one of the now numerous stacks of crates towering precariously up to the ceiling. He moved away from the pair to half-jog to the stack he had pointed to, taking up one of the straps on the floor which Arthur hadn't noticed prior, gripping the sides of one of the crates, and beginning to climb.
Arthur was busy still watching his brother strap the tower into place securely when Meena arrived. He hadn't seen her move.
"Things are going to take a little longer than we'd hoped," she said, a note of anxiety in her tone. "The machine that usually helps secure the boxes isn't working like it should. We don't have much time to fix it so they're going to secure things manually until then."
"How long do we have until the Empire knows we're here?" Alfred said from his place by the wall.
"By now, they probably already know you're all running," Meena said. Arthur's stomach dropped. He felt Francis tense beside him. "You should have returned from your party hours ago, so they will be searching, and the footage from the spaceport will have told them what ship to track. They're probably getting information through the warp points by now, but we can't say how far behind us they are until Britannic receives a message."
"Wait," Arthur said, a sudden thought striking him. He turned to face Meena with wide eyes. "That means this ship can never be used again."
Meena graced him with a thin smile. "We knew this would happen. This is a far lower price than we thought we would have to pay to receive the Angel."
Arthur snatched Francis' wrist and gripped it tightly, his heart beating furiously in his chest and his arms all gone cold. "Excuse me?"
Meena looked up at Francis, who shook his head and wrapped his other arm around Arthur's shoulders. "He is Arthur, not just one of their experiments."
Arthur glanced again at the catwalk that lead to the place they'd entered from. He wondered if the door was still open, if he could still make a break for it. Meena held her hands up in front of her and said, in what must have been her most placating voice, "Of course, you're right."
"What I'd like to know," Francis continued, "is why you would sacrifice a ship and make this more dangerous when you've obviously got other ways of smuggling people on and off of Italia."
"You're the only ones we've ever tried to smuggle off of Italia, much less out of Pompeii," Meena said. "This was the best option we were presented with."
"So the rebels on Pompeii are just abandoned there?"
Meena's smile finally broke into a shallow frown. Her brow furrowed Arthur wanted to curl up in a corner at the sight. "Alfred, Matthew, and Mona are the only rebel contacts on the entire planet of Italia. They risked their lives to infiltrate it with the understanding that they might never be able to be extracted. Mona is still risking her life to stay for the chance of acting as even the smallest foothold."
Matthew, of all people, was the one to cut Meena off.
"We weren't smuggled onto Pompeii," Matthew said, stepping away from the wall and getting between Meena and Francis, his arms out in front of him. "We were brought to a contact on Louie and made an identity there before applying to the prostitution program. More poor, manufacturing, and outer ring planets have rebel presence. Like Louie and like Britannic, and Moldovera."
Arthur cleared his throat of the lump that had lodged itself behind his Adams apple. Francis said, "Moldovera was a planetwide city," though he knew very well that Moldovera was one of the rare inner planets that had declared open war with the Empire, but Arthur could almost see his mind moving to another planet, another possibility, his little sister Marianne.
"A poor city," Matthew said. "A huge, poor city that used to supply them with scrap metal."
Gassed.
"What's going to happen to Britannic?" Arthur said, watching the floor by his feet.
"If we leave before the message arrives, nothing," Meena said. "But if we leave after it does, Britannic will be blamed for letting us go, most likely."
"They'll use napalm," Arthur whispered.
Francis elbowed him. "That won't happen. No one would dare destroy Britannic."
"Not if they could build a new one," Arthur said. "Or repopulate it."
"Hey," Matthew said. "Stop that. Both of you. It's not going to do anyone any good."
Arthur thought about the doorway the catwalk would take him to. He could still smell the ozone of his home. He could still run, still break from Francis' arm and make a dash for the doorway, run to the nearest Empire loyal and plead his case, plead it in front of a whole judge-jury-and-executioner courtroom. They would punish Britannic even if he returned, if they discovered the rebel population, and they punished rebels by—
He looked for his brother on the top of the towers of crates. His brother wasn't there. He was nowhere Arthur looked for him.
"Did you really think we were walking out of Pompeii without any risks?" Alfred said, his eyebrow arching.
Francis said, "Of course we knew there were risks, salaud, but this is Britannic. It is a dreadful, rainy little hunk of metal that no one is supposed to be able to sink, not even the Empire. If anything were to happen to Britannic, what do you think would happen? It wouldn't just affect Arthur and I—they supply the salt and water to more than three fourths of the galaxy!"
Francis, shoot me.
"We know that! Do you think we don't? Who the fuck d'you think gives that shit to the rebel planets? Meena's downplaying the risks we've taken for you right now. We're risking far more than just a fucking cargo ship!"
Francis, shoot me.
"Your risk? Your risk?
If they catch us, shoot me.
"Both of you will stop it right now or I will bash both your heads in!"
Don't let Angel destroy my home.
000
Arthur wandered dazedly up to the observation deck and peered out the window, hoping to catch a glimpse of his home.
He saw rain, and the gray interior of a hanger he didn't recognize, and two men on a ladder refueling the ship, their legs dangling off the panel they sat on while they laughed mutely on the other side of the glass.
Arthur returned below deck, unable to recognize anything but the rain.
000
The message came.
It was very simple.
"Cargo Ship BNC 105 to be forcibly detained for treason against the Emperor."
It came a little less than an hour after they had landed on Britannic, their cargo just barely all packed in and halfway harnessed down. The message blared out over the loudspeaker in the hanger.
All the workers paused simultaneously to listen. Like a hive of bees suddenly frozen in a snapshot. Franics and Alfred had stopped shouting and were sitting with Matthew and Arthur between them, and uneasy silence having spread over them for the last ten minutes, broken only by the sounds of the loading that had now stopped.
For one long, awful minute, all the gray uniformed workers stared at each other, wide-eyed and only faintly breathing.
Finally, a voice broke out, "Everybody out! Move it, fuckasses! If they take off quick enough, we can at least say we tried to hold them but failed!"
They moved at once, a wave of bodies rushing along the floor of the cargo bay and sliding off the top of the crate towers. There was very little noise except for the thunderous footsteps, all the men and women in the bay moving without speaking to listen for further instructions. They swarmed to exits Arthur hadn't known the cargo ship had, vanishing one by one until only the crew of their craft was left, scrambling to their stations for takeoff. The ship was rumbling before Arthur had gotten to his feet, straining to see if he could catch one last glimpse of his brother. Could it have been Aiden who shouted out the decision to run?
"Get in the hidden room!" Rishi shouted from across the hall. "We'll let you out in a minute, but if the cargo falls, you'll be safest there!"
Alfred and Matthew were up first, opening the way for Arthur and Francis as one of the crate towers began to sway threateningly.
They settled in the hidden room, bracing for the rocking of the ship's ascension and the rumbles of falling salt and water tanks.
It could have been that they still had another hour or two to out run their pursuers—but it could have been that the military cruisers were coming just minutes behind them, ready to shoot them into the ocean. Arthur was betting on the latter option, knowing the military reaction times better than anyone else for all the hours he spent staring down at the reports they'd given him of the Angel Assaults. He didn't say a word about that suspicion, though. It wouldn't have helped anyone, not now.
He pressed himself up against the back wall of their hidden room, his shoulders bumping into Francis on one side of him and rubbing against Matthew on his other side. He could feel the moment they broke atmosphere, with all the pressure that had been slowly pressing his lungs into his gut disappeared, and they floated free for just a moment before the artificial gravity kicked in hard. With his ears popping and pressed against the wall, he could hear the rumble of the thrusters deciding their speed and angle as though he were right next to them in the engine room, a participant in his own kidnapping.
He fled Britannic, knowing he had surrendered any say in whatever would happen to it next.
000
Some of the crates of salt fell at some point before Arthur was allowed out of the hidden room again. They were strewn across the floor, having been stopped by collisions with other stack and the water tanks. One box had broken open entirely, its corner split and bent until the precious white grains scattered across the floor. Alfred knelt down next to a pile of it, licked his finger, and ate some. He shuddered, but a moment later was calling Matthew over to join him.
Was that it?
He had sat in the hidden room for—it must have been hours. He had tired to count the time and failed miserably, but if it had been anything less than hours Arthur wasn't sure how he was going to survive the rest of his abduction.
He supposed he was now complicit in his abduction, though. So perhaps he could no longer call it that. He wasn't sure what other word would fit, though.
The worker who released them from the room was gone, already on his way back to whatever station post he held, and so if Arthur wanted to ask him the time, it was too late.
What good would it do to know the time, anyway? Just make him wonder if the military had destroyed Britannic yet. Just make him look back later with the knowledge that at 1050 the first bomb had dropped, and he would wonder if it had been 1050 when he was curled in the backroom behind him, watching the walls vibrate.
"Was that it?" Arthur said aloud, starting around at the stacks of salt and water and the workers shuffling by trying to clean up the spills, and Francis wandering away and the lights swinging above his head without a care in the universe, and, "Was that it?"
"Was there something else you expected?"
Arthur jumped and spun around. Rishi had approached him from the side when Arthur was staring up at the ceiling. He stood quietly in his suit, his hands in his pockets and a lean in his back.
"Sorry if I startled you," Rishi said. "Are you okay?"
"I'm fine," Arthur said quickly. Perhaps too quickly. He raised his hand and flicked it, hoping that would somehow convey just how okay he was. "Perfectly fine. Just. A little frazzled I suppose."
"That sounds like a bit more than just a little frazzled," Rishi said, coming over close and giving Arthur a pat on the back. Arthur flinched. The pat had been nowhere near his ports, but still. "Sure you're all right to be wandering around."
"Yes, I'm fine," Arthur said. "Really. I don't think sitting will do me any good right now. I just," he took a deep breath, "I guess I was just expecting something more… I don't know."
"It felt dull?" Rishi said with a grin. "You can stand, sure, but you have to move away from the vent now. We're going to bring out mattresses. It was too dull for a daring escape?"
"Kidnapping," Arthur corrected him, "But yes. I suppose."
"I'm not sure what you were expecting," Rishi said.
"Well, my home planet's probably on fire right now," Arthur said, his face twisting into a scowl and his voice coming out more snappish than he really wanted it to. "I feel like my life should actually feel like it's steeped in turmoil, instead of just cognitively knowing that as a fact."
Rishi just nodded, gently taking his arm and leading him away from the hidden room. "Yeah, I understand. But look at it this way. If it were more interesting—or full of turmoil, I guess, if you want to use that word—if it were more interesting, then it wouldn't be a very successful job we'd done, would it?"
Arthur shook his head, wanting to argue but not sure why or where to begin. Then, from from one of the many elevated doorways out of the cargo bay, Meena's voice rang out, "Come up!"
She was grinning widely and beckoning them in a far different way than they had been beckoned onto the ship originally. "Come up to the deck; have any of you ever been close enough to see a star?"
They moved out of the cargo bay almost embarrassingly quickly. Arthur wasn't entirely sure how much any of them actually cared about seeing a star, but it was sort of like being told to come look at a rainbow, or view a particularly lovely sunset. One didn't just refuse. But perhaps they were just as fidgety as he was. Perhaps they wanted a distraction from this dreadful flight as well. Perhaps he wasn't the only one with a great deal on his mind.
They shuffled up onto the observation deck of the ship. They were below the actual controls which dictated their course, but near enough to see some of the control panel's flickering lights.
The room they stood in was wide and bare, wrapping from the staircase—one stair down to the cargo bay, the other leading up into the control deck—all around the nose of the ship and then back around again to another separate staircase into the bay. The walls were covered in a sheet of white paint to make it more pleasant to sit and relax in. Several chairs, benches, and vending machines were set up against that wall, but they were by and large ignored. The other wall was made up of large, heavily reinforced tinted windows which all the members of their small party were soon cluttered around to look out at the great glowing orb suspended in the dark.
The violent rays were dimmed by the ship's windows, but the milky yellow ball of gas and fire still dominated the entire window. If Arthur pressed his cheek against the glass and stared as far back as he could, he was able to make out the pale blue dot of Britannic in the distance.
He heard Alfred's voice say something and then, 'celestial bodies.' He turned just in time to watch Alfred sway his hips and arms suggestively while Matthew laughed. He debated approaching them, unsure of if his presence would be an intrusion, but he stood uncomfortably between two groups: Matthew and Alfred chuckling to his left, Francis, Meena, and Rishi to his right, talking softly with gesturing hands and serious looks, all thoughts of stars abandoned. He glanced back and forth between the two factions, feeling the empty spaces at his sides much more than he previously had when he had first taken up his viewing spot.
His instinct was to go to Francis. He wasn't sure when exactly he had evolved that instinct, but he felt it then, in his chest. He fought it without showing much more than a small scowl on his face, deciding that whatever that conversation was the trio were having, he didn't feel up to being a part of it right now.
Instead, he turned again to the two brothers on his left and slowly began to approach them.
"Sorry," he said once they noticed them. "Do you mind if I join you?"
If Alfred was going to refuse him, Matthew didn't give him the chance, saying, "Yeah, sure. Al's just making really bad dirty jokes right now," before his brother had even had the chance to fully open his mouth.
"Wow," Arthur said, because he could think of no other response. He smiled as best he could, and hoped it didn't come out thin or forced.
Perhaps he should have moved towards Francis' group anyway, he thought. Perhaps he should have never approached either group. Perhaps he should have just gone back down to the belly of the ship and pretended none of the stars were passing by, separated by only a thin metal hull.
He tried to make his sigh of relief unnoticeable when Alfred and Matthew picked up their conversation again almost immediately.
He didn't pay it much attention. Alfred had moved on to, 'starlight, starbright, babe come home with me tonight,' and 'I'm attracted to you like a planet to its sun—with a large force inversely proportional to the distance squared,' (after that one, Matthew hit him. It seemed like a soft hit, compared to the ones Arthur recalled; his brother had been so close to him mere hours ago, close enough to touch) and Arthur, without being directly invested or involved in the chatting, spaced out until Matthew said his name.
"Hey, Arthur, have you—sorry, stupid question."
Arthur startled out of his reprieve. He blinked rapidly and looked up again. "Sorry, what?"
Matthew shook his head quickly while behind him, his brother rolled his eyes. "I, uh, just blanked a lot, sorry. I was going to ask if you'd been off-world before this, but then I realized, duh. Sorry."
"It's fine," Arthur said. He smiled very faintly, and the ever-present knot in his chest loosened just a bit. "Yeah, I've flown—twice, I guess."
"Just twice?" said Alfred, raising an eyebrow. "Seriously?"
Matthew elbowed his brother sharply. "Don't mind him, he's basically lived in space for most of his childhood."
"Ah, really?" Arthur said, turning to look at Alfred instead, who gently rubbed his abused ribcage. "That must have been interesting."
"I guess you could say that," Alfred said, shrugging. "I mean, I wasn't too fond of it myself at the time. I learned how to hack computers and shit, though. When you're alone with nothing to do, you learn a lot of random shit. "
"Were you born on a ship?"
Alfred shook his head. "Nah, I used to have a little moon I lived on. Cow fields. Flowers. It was great."
Arthur got a low shiver in his spine and decided he didn't want to know what had caused Alfred's move into space. Instead he turned back to Matthew. "Do you fly much?"
Matthew shook is head. "Just once before we had to go to Pompeii, and I didn't see very much on either of those trips. We kept very busy last time. I did fly a lot when I was a newborn, but I don't count those, since I can't exactly remember things from that young."
"Not the worst trips possible, then," Arthur said, a small smile managing onto his face once more.
"Yeah, though up—oh. Nevermind."
"Hm?"
"It's nothing, I just—I did fly one other time but it was short and I didn't really—" Matthew coughed. "Um. I did evacuate once, but it doesn't count. I shouldn't have mentioned it."
The discomfort emerged again like a tide rising up and tugging at Arthur's ankles. "Oh," he said. He took a breath, realizing that with this many run-ins in such a simple conversation, there was really not going to be a way to avoid talking about it. He might as well broach it, if he was going to be hung either way. "Um. How. How long ago? Did you evacuate. I mean."
Alfred and Matthew shared a glance, all cheerfulness and joking swept from their faces. Matthew said. "Three years, ish? A little more, probably. Somewhere between there."
The chill rose to Arthur's stomach and infiltrated his lungs. It was a different chill than the one from his usual low body temperature. This chill was clenching and painful, and no amount of heated blankets would be able to chase it from his bones if he didn't confirm this right now. He told himself that as he tried to think of what to say next, how to continue this topic, but his mouth had gone dry.
Leaving a childhood home was tragic, certainly, and not something Arthur would want to bring up in case it was upsetting, but—but three years meant that there was a chance that it was—
"Early Angel Assault?" He croaked the words out before he was ready. He saw Matthew suck in a breath through his teeth. Alfred reached up and put a hand on his back, and Matthew leaned into it so subtly Arthur almost didn't notice.
"Yeah," Matthew said. "Yeah. Two in a row. Two little moons off of Prien. We were on the second, Joten."
"I'm so sorry," Arthur said. Would it be wrong of him to reach out and hold Matthew's hand? The urge came suddenly to him, too quickly for him to know what to do, but while he struggled with that the next words came easier and without much thought. "Can you tell me what happened?"
Alfred's steadying hand turned into a tight arm around Matthew's shoulders, pulling him back and switching their places. Arthur stumbled back a few steps. Alfred followed him, encroaching menacingly despite Matthew's very soft voice telling someone to stop.
"No, we can't, not as well as you could," Alfred said, hissing through his teeth in what might have been an attempt to keep the others in the room from noticing what was going on. "You planned it. It was the reason we started hunting you in the first place. You know exactly what happened and if you think it's funny to try and hold this over us, then I should—"
"—Al," Matthew grabbed Alfred's arm and tugged him away from Arthur. "Chill! He's not fucking interrogating us!"
"He was being a—"
"I don't know."
Both brothers stilled and turned to face Arthur as he spoke, his voice thin. He cringed down at their looks. Alfred was still glaring at him through his glasses.
"I don't," said Arthur. "I really don't, I swear, they—I don't remember what happens during a session. The doctors said they'd mindwipe me but Francis says the information's never there in the first place, but I don't—" he wet his lips, "—apparently there's a lot I don't know."
Neither brother responded.
"Francis knows far more about the Assaults than I do," Arthur said finally.
Alfred pursed his lips and glanced at Matthew once more before letting his brother go and storming silently across the room to where their smugglers and Francis stood, still chatting obliviously.
Arthur reached out and took Matthew's hand.
"Please," he said quietly, once Alfred was very much out of earshot. "Please, Matthew, I really don't know."
"I know," said Matthew. "Or, I didn't know. But I believe you."
They both fell quiet for a short while. Just long enough for the voices behind Arthur to rise.
"Let's head back below deck," Matthew suggested. They did. Alfred came with them initially, but paused midway down the stairs.
"I'm going to stay up here and watch the star," he said after a moment. "Holler if you need me."
"Okay," Matthew said. "I will."
Arthur didn't reply. It wasn't directed towards him, anyway.
They descended back onto the floor of the cargo bay, the stacks of crates and tankards piling up around them. The salt spills had long been cleaned up. There was no one about except for the occasional wandering shiphand on the catwalks above their heads.
They returned to the hidden room to find that their beds had arrived, though their bunks were more of mattresses on the floor with some semblance of order and some blankets and pillows on top. Arthur claimed one which they both sat on, trying to not mind the creak it make. There were several layers of comforter piled up on top of the mattress he chose, hopefully enough to keep him warm. Arthur was tempted to kick off his shoes, slide beneath his blankets, and lay in a cocoon of them until he felt slightly less awful.
"Arthur?" said Matthew beside him. "Your eyes are turning red."
"I'm sorry," Arthur said, even though he knew this wasn't one of the things he had to apologize for. "I'm just thinking about a lot of things right now."
"Like what?"
There was a long silence while Arthur tried to decide whether or not he should speak. He'd done enough damage up in the observatory deck. It would probably be better to just stay quiet. But that wouldn't endear him to Matthew, either—it wouldn't endear him to anyone, probably.
Matthew sat beside him patiently, hand on Arthur's back, eyes watching the other side of the room, waiting without staring. "It's fine if you don't want to, but I'll listen."
Arthur thought for a few moments longer. Where to begin if he spoke? What was it that was even eating him so badly right now? Why didn't he just curl under his blankets like he'd wanted.
"Do you ever wonder about; I mean," Arthur said finally, his voice a whisper. It was scratchy and strained. Matthew's lips were against his ear quickly, asking him in that gentle voice to repeat. Arthur spoke louder. "Sometimes I wonder what it's like to die."
"Oh," Matthew said. An uncomfortable silence settled on him as he searched for words. His hand rubbed circles between Arthur's shoulder blades, between Arthur's ports. "What d'you think it's like?"
"I just said I don't know; I don't remember being dead." Arthur said. "I hope it's like falling asleep. I hope it's like nothing at all."
"I don't want it to be nothing," Matthew said. "I want it to be sort of like living. But I guess, happier. Less suffering."
"That's life," Arthur said. "What you want, I mean. Life is for the living. Death is for the dead. It has to be different, right? It has to be some sort of comforting thing. I'm sure Francis would say something sort of like that. It makes sense when he says it, but he always backtracks and fucks it up. I don't know what I'm saying anymore."
Arthur sighed. Matthew did too. He continued to rub Arthur's back. "Why do you wonder?"
Arthur swallowed and thought back to the scrawled pages of his diary in the hidden drawer in his desk. "I've killed a lot of people," he said.
"I know," Matthew said.
"Sometimes I think," Arthur said. Then he paused to examine how to phrase the thought in his head. Had he been talking to Francis, there would have been some sort of comment about 'sometimes you think? Preposterous,' and Arthur would roll his eyes, and Francis would lead the conversation off track so far that by the time Arthur remembered what he wanted to say, it would be too late and hard to bring the subject back up again. He almost expected it to happen; years spent alongside Francis had gotten Arthur used to dealing with people as though everyone was a different form of Francis. Matthew didn't speak though. Matthew waited, and continued to rub Arthur's back, giving him time to think through his words until he was happy with how they would sound. "Sometimes I think that if I can die, it might make it up to those who I've killed, and to their families."
"You're just one life," Matthew said in his gentle voice. "Your death won't make anything up, it's one life against hundreds—" millions, Arthur corrected him, "—the best thing you could do would be keep living and try to make it up that way."
"Lives have different intrinsic values," Arthur said. Matthew made a confused sound. "Have you heard of the trolley dilemma? There's two rail lines, five people stand on one end of one line, one person stands on the other. The trolley's breaks are off, so one of the groups at the end of the lines will die no matter what. Do nothing and five people die, but there's a switch beside you. If you pull the switch, the trolley can change lines, and the one person will die instead. That dilemma. Do you know it?"
"No," Matthew said, "But I understand what you're saying. Kill the one person and the blood is on your hands directly because you chose to, but by doing nothing and killing more people, you technically aren't at fault so you don't have to deal with guilt?"
"Exactly," Arthur said. "And if someone else is telling you what to do with the lever, you're absolved of guilt no matter what. That's why we need strategists to decide, and generals to issue orders, and a leader above us all to forgive us for deciding. Making soldiers decide on their own is—was—supposed to be avoided whenever possible."
Matthew smiled and spoke again, thinking Arthur was finished speaking and accidentally cutting off an attempted segue. "Good system. I probably wouldn't be able to pull the lever on my own. I don't know."
"Francis would pull the level. He did all the time in practice battles. Pulled all sorts of levers." Arthur said, smiling faintly in response. "I hope that I would. I don't know. I've had a lot longer to think about it than you have, too. But that's not where I was going with this."
Matthew lifted his head a bit higher. "Oh?"
Somewhere in the background, Arthur could hear the ship workers walking around and carrying things. The salt blocks slid ever so slightly in their restraints and the water sloshed about in its containers. The ship hummed.
"Imagine that what's at the end of the line was different. If you do let the trolley continue down its chosen path, you get five… 'good things,' I suppose. Good deeds. Things that living people can do to better the world around them. Everyone benefits." Arthur watched as Matthew's face changed from his faint, sympathetic smile to a worried frown. "Or you can pull the lever and on that end is the death of a murderer. Let's say… Romulus Dominus. What would you do?"
Matthew bit his lip. He said nothing. He didn't need to. Arthur could guess what his answer would be by the way the hand on his back tightened.
"Imagine how many of my victims would love for someone to pull that lever and turn a trolley towards me."
"That may be true," Matthew said. "But it's still not right."
"True, but 'not right,'" Arthur said, trying to contain his eye roll. "I am not the person to lecture about morality. Especially not now. And probably not by you, if I had a guess."
Matthew snorted and laughed. It was a bit of a pathetic laugh, but Arthur would take it. It brought the smile back to Matthew's face, at least.
"Can't you live for your victims instead of dying?" Matthew said. "Survive for the lives they didn't have? You'll die one day anyway. No matter what, we all die. If at the end of your life your survivors still feel like they want to pull the lever, then they'll still get that satisfaction, but in the meantime, can't you also do the good deeds you said were on the straight path?"
Arthur's response was immediate.
"That's cruel."
"Hm?"
"To both of us," Arthur said, leaning on Matthew's shoulder. "It's cruel. To ask someone to live for a dead person. That's the worst thing you could ask me to do at this point, aside from going back into one of those fucking computers. That's hard."
Matthew wrapped his arm around Arthur's shoulder, taking his weight and letting his hand run through Arthur's hair.
"How could I do that?" Arthur said. "Who could do that? Who can go through life with that kind of thing on their mind? Every time they're about to eat a sandwich they'll be thinking, 'I hope this was a productive use of my life that a million dead people are entrusting me to enjoy to the fullest because they're dead and can't enjoy it anymore—fuck, this isn't good enough, I vaguely don't like it. Shit. Wasted my life more than ever. Sandwich isn't good enough. I fucked it up."
Matthew laughed. Arthur began to cry.
Neither of them spoke much after that, but Matthew held him for a very long time, quietly stroking his hair.
Three weeks later, their ship touched down on a small habitable strip on the planet Prien, where Arthur and Francis stepped onto the coarse, burnt ground to meet with the rebellion for the first time.
000
Notes:
I swore I wouldn't be That Fic Author who uses overused philosophical hypothetical morality situations in their fic but GOD. DAMNIT. It fit really well at 12:24 at night!
All y'all people who read Ocean at The End of the Lane can guess which part really fucked me up. Neil Gaiman hit it all right on the head. If anyone was in doubt before, I can vouch. The "this sandwich isn't the best I've ever experienced, I'm wASTING LIFE" feeling is a real feeling and it is both bullshit to deal with because logically, not every sandwich is going to be the best ever sandwich ever, but it's such a hard feeling to get rid of.
This was even longer before I decided the first 10 pages should be put up as the 'prologue' portion.
Is… is 'holler' a word people still use outside of my ten mile radius?
One reviewer mentioned not being sure what the songs in the chapter titles meant. They're mainly just songs that I felt fit the chapter and Angel story overall, whose titles also fit within the theme of "fire." If you wanna listen to them while reading, go for it, but they're also just a general sound cue type thing.
Two of Alfred's pickup lines are from jokes4us dot com under 'pickup lines'.
My recommendation for a cosmic pickup line? "Are you a planet? Because baby, you've got some kind of a celestial body."
000
Slight change of plans. Part 2 of this isn't totally finished yet, so I'll be uploading that in the next coming days once it's done. Part 2 is the "optional" chapter that you can skip if you want and you won't miss anything important. Part 3 will come soon after, once it's out of the editing stage. I was just really excited and didn't want to wait until August? and dyrimthespeaker agrees. No one wants to wait until August.
000
'"They'll use napalm," Arthur whispered.'
You know what war device I hate and fear almost as much but not on the exact same level as an atom bomb? Napalm. Fuck napalm. Let me tell you about napalm.
Napalm is jelled petroleum lit on fire. Therefore, it a) sticks to your skin if it touches yoour (there is still no practical way to get it off) and b) it does not go out if you douse it in water. When initially deployed for firebombs in WWII, it was discovered that you could avoid napalm by going underwater, since petroleum is less dense than water and would float on the surface. That was viewed as a flaw, and so white phosphorus was added, and now napalm can burn you underwater, too. Adding water only creates smoke or an explosion due to heat differences. Water boils at 100C or 212F. Napalm burns at 800-1200C or 1500-2200F. That twice as hot as the surface temp of Venus. Venus. The Hell Planet.
People who hide in shelters and have managed to avoid the actual burning death from napalm can still be killed by heat stroke, radiant heat, dehydration, suffocation, smoke exposure (especially when around a lot of water) or carbon monoxide poisoning. In addition to being used by the US in WWII during the firebombing of Germany and France, it was used in the firebombing of Japan which resulted in 330,000 deaths, by the UN during the Korean War, and most famously, napalm was used extensively in the Vietnam War alongside the biological hazard Agent Orange, which have left mental, emotional, biological, and ecological scars which last to this day, very similarly to the way goddamn radiation hangs around messing with everything it encounters.
Fuck napalm.
