Do you ever think about how if something as simple as lighting was different as you write, something could have gone differently? A character's fate, a foreshadow, a new plan-lost to...where?

0o0o0o

Yao slept fitfully. Ivan had seen him asleep enough to know that. It wasn't that he moved or groaned or woke often, it was simply that his face twisted and he mouthed pained words. Ivan had caught him whispering apologies more than once. It made his chest feel tight.

And so he always woke Yao, just a brush of his hand on the nobleman's neck and Yao would rouse. He always drew back before he realized. He tried to convince himself that he saved Yao from the bad dreams, but he wouldn't always be there to wake Yao up, and experience said that dreams always came back.

'Ivan…' Yao's eyes fluttered open. 'What time is it?'

'Early.' If he was still an ambassador, he could have expected a meeting in an hour or less. He pushed the thought away and toyed with a strand of Yao's hair. 'You should get up.'

'I don't want to,' Yao said. He sounded exhausted and pained. Ivan looked at him, at how vulnerable he seemed.

'Come closer, Yao,' he directed. The slighter man obliged him, and he reached for a comb and gently worked through the tangles. When his hair was shining smooth, Ivan tied it back with the elastic and made Yao look him in the eye. 'You have to.'

'I do have my duties,' Yao admitted with a ghost of a smile. It was too heavy to be honest, and finally it slipped from his face. 'What are we going to do, Ivan?'

The helplessness in his voice hurt Ivan. He wanted to say he didn't know, to let someone else decide things so the weight of the consequences would for once fall to someone else. But he had his duties to the man he loved as much as that man had his to a fleet.

'I will keep the file here,' he decided. 'That way, if it is found, you won't look to be involved.'

The question again of how his sister was sent, how his leader knew echoed through his mind, but he pushed it back. Later. In the paperwork of his desk, the job he'd been regulated to, there he could wonder.

Yao tried to laugh. It came out too slanted and sharp. 'I can take it.'

'No, Yao,' he said firmly. Yao's eyes met his for a second before dropping.

'If you want, Ivan.'

They sat there until Yao hauled himself upright with a low groan.

'I know I have a speech today,' he said distractedly. 'Kiku knows the rest. I can't think straight.'

Ivan rubbed a hand over his back, and Yao laced his fingers in that hand and turned to kiss him, insistent and demanding. He let it happen.

Yao sat back, eyes hungry on every inch of him, hands curled tight in his scarf. At a touch, he met Ivan's eyes, and his body sagged.

'Have you heard of the proverb 'one day, three autumns'?' he asked softly. Ivan shook his head. Yao closed his eyes. 'It means you miss someone so much, a single day feels like three years when you are apart.'

He opened his eyes. Ivan thought he looked old, ancient, weary. He didn't resist when Ivan kissed him again, and when they broke apart, Yao left with barely a glance back.

0o0o0o

Yao pulled his device from his pocket and pressed the command for 'LAST NUMBER'.

'You said he knows.'

'He does. The aim now will be to take the target off my brother's back.' Natalya's voice held a warning note. Yao laughed tiredly.

'I thought you didn't care about your brother.'

'I've been trying not to,' she said shortly. 'Before I became a commander, we were very close. Now, we are less so. I still care for him, however dangerous it is to.'

'Loving Ivan is a double-edged sword,' Yao said with a shadowed smile. Natalya almost laughed.

'I tried so hard to stop caring for him.'

'You make a good show of not caring,' he said, too tired to think about it. 'Next time, could you call me at a more convenient hour?'

'It was a very private hour,' she said sharply. Yao pulled at his rumpled sleeve, wondering how best to phrase it.

'It almost woke Ivan.'

She was silent for a long while after. Yao took the opportunity to slip through the gates between their fleets, secret departure aided by the young soldier with a new handful of bills.

He walked briskly and pressed the device back to his ear.

'-and if he does you need to be careful that-'

'Sorry, repeat everything since you paused,' he directed, distracted by his keys.

'You need to warn him that he cannot reveal that he knows he might be safe. Also, Yao.' She shifted, the rustle sounded staticy. 'If you have the folder, you need to ensure his fingerprints are off it, both literally and figuratively. And if he does, you need to be careful that it seems harmless that he did so.'

'What?'

'The more involved with you he is, the more in danger he is,' she enunciated slowly. 'Our leader doesn't care about him. He cares about you, and even though he will...will dispose of Ivan if he is in the way, you can keep him safe by-'

'Don't,' Yao whispered. The door clicked behind him.

'Yao-'

He saw the letter on his desk and his hands were on it in a second, but Ivan's warning that he could not destroy it echoed through his mind maddeningly-he wanted to destroy it!-and he forced himself to shove it deep in the garbage, to bury it and all its threats to what he cared for underneath weight and padding. A choked, burning sound escaped him.

'Yao!'

He stopped, device still clutched to ear, and heard the soft keening sound that must be from him. Crying.

'Don't say it,' he begged. Natalya hesitated.

'Do you know what I am telling you?'

'Yes,' he whispered. 'Please, just don't say it.'

She paused. 'Yao, if you continually put him in danger like this-'

'-I know,' he breathed-

'-I will stop you from doing it.'

The warning hung in the air, his 'ally' again with a threat, and he ached for Kiku.

'I know,' he said quietly. Natalya ended the call.

0o0o0o

Kiku had the itinerary of the day in his hand before Yao spoke a single word. He knew his teacher too well. Better than Yao knew himself, he sometimes thought.

'Kiku, I have a speech today, don't I?' he asked. He sounded exhausted.

'Yes. Are you going to be delivering it sounding like that?' he asked. Yao chuckled.

'I might have to.' The momentary lightness left his voice. 'There's things in the cupboards. Don't worry.'

'I'm not worried about your ability to help yourself, I'm worried whether you will.' Kiku frowned down at the timetable. 'I'll be at your rooms shortly. We can go over the day together, and I'll make you tea.'

'Thank you, Kiku.' The younger was about to hang up when Yao spoke again. 'I don't thank you enough. I'm sorry for that.'

Kiku's throat felt funny, and he pressed his lips together, not trusting his voice. 'It is okay.'

'It's really not.' Yao sighed, almost laughing. 'Thank you, Kiku,' he said again, and ended the call.

Kiku swept his papers for the day into a pile. It would be unlikely he would have time to go back to his rooms after he was done talking with Yao.

0o0o0o

Yao looked worse than he sounded. When Kiku came in, he managed a weak laugh.

'Don't worry about me,' he assured. Kiku offered a wan smile and set to making tea.

'The only major event today is the speech, but you also have a few minor meetings one-on-one with some officials. It shouldn't be anything major,' he said, focusing on letting the tea steep.

Yao nodded and sank deeper into his chair. 'When's the speech?'

'Two hours.' Kiku glanced at the clock in the wall. 'One and a half.'

Yao winced as he reached over to his desk and ruffled through papers until he found a copy.

'You have memorized it, Yao?' Kiku asked. Yao finally laughed.

'I did. I at least did that,' he joked. Kiku looked worried and apologetic, and Yao waved him down. 'It's just been a bad week,' he confessed quietly, any trace of his good mood gone. 'I don't know if I'll ever get over it.'

'I wonder the same thing,' Kiku said, handing him a cup of tea. Yao closed his eyes and breathed in the scent. 'I don't think we ever will. Nor will his parents.'

'Or Emil.'

Kiku frowned. 'Emil?'

'He loved him,' Yao said softly, staring past Kiku to the dark window, speckled with stars. Kiku nodded, trying to accommodate the world to that.

'I-I did not know.'

'Me either, until I saw it in his eyes at the funeral,' Yao said simply, and drained his tea.

Kiku ended up at his rooms again after that.

0o0o0o

Yao could hear every pulse of his heart in the back of his skull. It was always like this before a speech-he loathed the things-but he knew it would all fall away onstage. That, or he would.

Kiku met his eyes and nodded, eyes betraying his worries. Yao nodded back and then someone was calling him up, and the hot stage lights were on him and if he looked high enough, he couldn't see the people, not even those in the front row.

'I am here to talk about alliances,' he said. The people waited, breath bated. He looked at them, at the ones in the first row and the ones he could not see for the lights. 'I am here to talk about an alliance that does not deal in war nor does it deal in the diplomacies of peace. This alliance has no sides, for we are fighting a common enemy. The coughing virus.'

Everything was silent. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see Kiku looking proud, looking alight and alive for the first time in so long. It made him strong. He raised his head, called to the back, called every voice of these people he lead.

'I intend to eradicate this virus. There will be no way to erase completely the scars of the wars. They will be mankind's reminder to do better, to never again break the rules that make us more than beasts.'

'Yao.' The warning in his headset that he was not supposed to say that, that he was deviating from the words on paper, but new ones spilled off his tongue fast as water and sweet as honey.

Kiku's image turned to Leon, talking, asking questions. He hurt because of it.

'But we can rise above the ashes. We have done so in starships. We can do so again.'

The crowd was waiting, humming. He was attuned to them, to their souls and hearts and voices. This is what it was to be their leader, he thought dizzily. This is what it meant to live for them. He regretted none of the pains. It was all worth it for this, for them.

Leon, laughing. Leon, alive.

His headset was beeping constant warnings now, and he shouted the last words with a fury before he heard the mic click off.

'I am not the one who will bring us back from the edge. You are. For you are the people and I am your mouthpiece, because we are the ones that will remake and rebuild and relive. We will be able to try again and this time, we will do better!'

The crowd exploded into cheers, reverberating through his chest and his heart and deep in his bones. He was alive, so alive, the world shone bright and loud and he loved his people so fiercely he thought he might shatter from it. The roar of the crowd took his breath away, made his chest crush tight and tighter, made the world swirl-

-Kiku shouting, the ceiling tipping slowly, slowly down-

Yao Wang collapsed, and the world went dark and silent.

0o0o0o

Where do the ideas you leave behind go? Where do the ones you choose in split-second decisions come from? I think it's the same place.

:: Streetlights and car headlights shining through windows and slanting like sunlight against walls at three AM