The scope of her sniper needed cleaning.

It was a supremacy rifle, much better than her last one. It was also a good distraction.

And she needed one. Her new position was great, but the others in it were not. Most of her missions now were solo missions, but group assignments hadn't gone well. On missions they ignored her advice and everything that went wrong was her fault- not the teasing blame that Niff had assigned, but to the point that even their instructors believed that she was the real problem. Every time she'd tried to make a suggestion or warn them of an unforeseen danger it was turned into a personal insult. She had no idea what she had done to make them hate her, but they were almost as bad as her sisters.

The program was for talented corsairs that were closer to her age. They were all under 30, but Petra was still the youngest. Even still, she was shocked by their petty, childish behavior. The work she did now was much better than what she'd done under the Armada, though, and she preferred it. Niff was the only friend she'd ever had, so working alone was nothing new.

This position gave her a better opportunity to prove herself. She was doing better and more complicated work here. If she could prove herself and rise to a higher rank, she could serve Queen Mara. That was the only thing she'd wanted to do when she was training as a techeun and it was the only thing she wanted now. Mara was so wise and regal, the very definition of a superlative leader, effective, gracious, and compassionate. She understood the people she ruled, the people she fought for, and knew what it was like to be nothing. But she had risen so far above, it was… incredible. If such an incredible Queen could have a use for a devoted corsair, then Petra would be fully satisfied. She'd finally be worth something good. No one would ignore her, lie to her, sideline her, or hurt her. She didn't like most people, because they did that to each other. It was much better to be independent, and not have to rely on others. People always let her down. Now that she was mostly on her own, she had plenty to eat, she could make her own choices and serve whom she wanted to. She could do everything right, instead of being forced to steal illegal drugs for her sisters so they could avoid the consequences. She hadn't even wanted to use them in the first place, and she had let herself get caught every time because it was the only way to stop them. The only way to help them. Even though she'd been arrested at least seven times by the time she was thirteen, each experience had been miserable and frightening. Those were the only times she'd ever let herself cry, alone in a cold, dark cell, with no sisters to tell her to shut up and stop being a baby. How she wished she had been able to fend for herself, instead of being forced to depend on them for a measly survival. They had taken advantage of her: starved her, hurt her, forced her to steal for them- often using their magic to control her when she wouldn't bend- and offering very little in return.

The place where she had stayed was pretty, too. She had her own house, hidden in a cave in the mountains, and it was a very cozy little place. All of this was in the Dreaming City, one of the Reef's beautiful new hidden cities shaped from the Vestian asteroids and Ahamkara wishes. The training grounds had a river, a forest, mountains, hiking and climbing trails, and a sloped lawn with layered ledges going down toward a lake. It was at that moment the hour they had to do whatever they wanted between missions, and Petra was sitting on the highest ledge, cleaning out her Supremacy rifle.

She was a decent ways away from the pavilion, but not far enough that she couldn't hear the other corsairs laughing merrily over a game they were playing, a modern version of a golden age murder-mystery game called Mafia.

"How do you play?" she'd asked them. She'd never learned any games as a child. The other eight corsairs seemed to all be best friends and one if them, Kja, a woman with dark blue hair and pale green eyes, seemed to be their leader. Kja explained it to her. Petra asked if she could play.

"Oh, I don't think so," Kja wore a nasty smile. "Aren't you going on a mission? You should probably get ready."

"I have plenty of time."

"Hm, I don't think you do. The rounds are pretty long. Right?" the others nodded in agreement.

Petra had taken the hint and wandered off. She could hear them from where she was sitting, cleaning her sniper. They'd been through four rounds.

Let them have their game. Let them act their age. It wouldn't do them any good in the long run.

But it still made her feel a little lonely inside, in that quiet little part of her that didn't want to be alone. That little part that didn't care about recognition or success, that wanted something else. The part she always ignored because it would only get in her way.

Her sniper needed cleaning. That was a much easier thing to fix.

So she had sat there, alone, and cleaned it, scraping grime out of the inside of the barrel. She had exhaled hard on her scope, watched it fog up, and wiped it clean on the corner of her sleeve. Her arms now ached from an hour of polishing her already gleaming supremacy rifle and thinking about success.

She was so busy not listening to the talk and laughter coming from the pavilion that she almost didn't hear the sound of boots crunching on the rock path behind her, as someone slowly walked up and sat down next to her.

"Hey," Prince Uldren said casually, offering her a smile, "I got another mission for you."

The whole world seemed to suddenly brighten, as if the sun had come out from behind a cloud. Her missions were the only things she looked forward to. She had worked many operations under the Prince since being transferred, and she enjoyed it. The program instructors were harsh, maintained a strict set of guidelines, and always expected the worst from her, but her work with Prince Uldren was outside of regular training, and he was more relaxed, so she had much more room to work it her way. He planned a mission in the understanding that things wouldn't go as expected and left plenty of room for a backup plan to be made. He treated her not as a child, as the Armada had, nor as a mindless war machine, as the instructors did, but as a friend. Out of all of those she had worked under she would have least expected such easy conversations and a growing familiarity from the most powerful and important person on the Reef besides Queen Mara herself. But she trusted him, in a way she certainly hadn't trusted the Paladins or the Armada, in a way she didn't fully understand.

They often found themselves taking almost an hour to walk back to their ships rather than a five-minute sparrow ride just to talk to each other. Good conversation was hard to find in a world designed for speed and convenience. He had told her all about his life before becoming awoken, how he'd lived on the Mars colony, how he'd never known his father, how his mother had been one of the maintenance workers, a hard job, and how he and Mara had gone to a small school for the workers' children. She had told him how her sisters had treated her, being starved, beaten, forced to steal, and how she had been arrested countless times and taken the blame. It was as if they had been drawn together by a deep understanding, for both knew the sense of invisiblessness. Uldren, as a lower-class worker, constantly taking the harshest blows for Mara's actions, then in his sister's shadow, seen as an extension of Mara since before the fabled Theodicy War in Distributary many thousands of years past; and Petra, as the unwilling pawn of not one but seven scheming sisters, her existence ignored except as a tool and a scapegoat, beaten into submission.

"But… I feel like… someday that will be a good thing," she'd once told him, "As if I understand the universe better for my struggles, or… I don't really know how to explain it."

"Pain is how you know that you really have it in you to keep going, the price paid for wisdom," he'd agreed, "And people aren't walls. The more you throw at them, the stronger they get."

She couldn't have said it better. How had she found someone so easy to talk to, so easy to listen to? They had a similar view on everything she'd always been so scared to say. She'd spent her whole life fighting just to stay alive without ever knowing who she really was or what she really wanted. Having someone to talk to made everything come into a clearer focus, helped her make sense of all the things she'd never understood about herself.

"This one will be a little different," he told her. "Today's target is too clever for a simple sniper assassination, but if he's busy evading one hunter, he won't notice when he's in another's sights. So you'll be waiting to snipe him while I track him on the ground. I'll send him toward a clear position. Take him out as soon as you're sure you can make the shot, otherwise, don't risk revealing yourself."

"Sounds fun. What's his name?"

"Prixit. You know the Butcher of Bamberga? They're friends."

"Ah."

"Come on- we'll take my ship since we're both going into the field."

He brought her to a ledge on a cliff overlooking a forest. It was wide and thrown in shadow, a perfect sniper's nest. She lay down on the rocks by the edge of the cliff. He knelt beside her. "I'm uploading a set of coordinates. This is the first place you'll be able to get a clear shot at him."

She scanned the coordinates, but couldn't see through the trees. He leaned in and, putting his hand over hers, slowly pushed her sniper a little to the left. She felt a little dizzy, finding it suddenly hard to breathe, her heart pounding even before the fight had started.

"There," he whispered. She could see it now, a tiny clearing in the forest, but he still didn't move for a few long moments.

"Right," he muttered, standing up and backing away. She turned to look at him, propping herself up on her elbows. He was checking his supply of knives, glancing at her uneasily. "I'll keep you updated. Let you know when he's nearing the final position."

He climbed back into his ship and flew toad his own starting position, leaving her feeling very confused. She had never felt that way before. It had been such a strange feeling, being so close to him, like she hadn't wanted him to go. The quiet part of her that was always so annoying and empty was a little happier, in an almost hopeful way. What the hell had just happened?

"Alright, I'm on his trail. He's heading north. I'm going to cut him off to send him back in your direction. He's about 10 and a half klicks away from the coordinates."

"Got it. I'm keeping an eye on the final position and a one-klick radius." she waited tensely, trying to focus on the clearing and not on the nervous feeling that she had so suddenly become aware of, for now that she was thinking about it she realized that it had been there for a very long time.

As she scanned the treeline, she saw that something was off. There were supposed to be a few Crow drones circling the area, but instead, she saw the still-smoking ruins of a downed drone, and several fallen Shanks hovering near Uldren's position, as if they were marking it.

Hit by a sudden suspicion, she moved the scope of her sniper to check a spot on a cliff west of her position. Her stomach lurched. Lying on a similar ledge was a fallen Vandal with a sniper, tracking a target, his finder drifting toward the trigger.

"Uldren, watch out!" she hissed into the channel. "There's another sniper! He-" she froze, hearing a bullet rip through the air.

Heart pounding, she called his name into the earpiece. "Uldren? Uldren!"

It felt like hours passed before he responded half a minute later. "I'm fine. Hit, but fine."

"The sniper is located 14 klicks away at 312 degrees from your position. Find cover and stay low. I'll take care of him."

"No! Go after Prixit first. He's probably escaping. Here's the coordinates of where I saw him last."

She checked the coordinates. No sign of the target. If I were Prixit- and thinking myself such a genius, by the way, for being SO original with my plan to take out Prince Uldren- but my sniper buddy didn't one-hit him, what would I be doing? She wondered. Of course, I'd be on my way to finish him off. She focused her sniper on the area surrounding Uldren's location, spotting a shadow creeping through the trees toward where he had taken cover in an enormous, hollowed-out and dying tree, and tried not to notice how bad the injury looked. As Prixit leapt out to attack, he fell to the ground with a bullet in his brain. Uldren shiften, startled, but winced as blood dripped out from between his fingertips where his hand was pressed hard against his shoulder.

Swiftly readjusting her position, she found the startled sniper in the mountain. He was looking right at her. With the red-dot sight between his eyes, she pulled the trigger and rolled out of the way as he sent a bullet of his own in her direction. It hit the rocks behind her and clattered away. She checked again and to her relief, she had taken out the sniper as well.

"The sniper is down. Stay where you are, I'm coming down to you."

"Copy that."

She programmed a transmat to his coordinates, taking in the sight of him and his blood-soaked sleeve. "Uldren! Are you alright?"

"Fine. I'm fine. We should get back to my ship. I-" he winced again as he tried to lurch forward, leaning against a tree for support, still clutching his shoulder. "Damn it."

"How bad is it?"
"It's not fatal."

"Unless it keeps bleeding like that. Let me have a look."

He sighed, reluctantly moving his hand and pulling his ripped sleeve aside to show her the wound.

"You have an interesting definition of 'fine.' Sit down. That bleeding needs to stop before you can go anywhere."

He slumped to the ground, sitting back against a rock. Kneeling beside him, she took a thick cloth from a medical kit and pressed it against his shoulder, whispering, "I"m so sorry. If I had spotted that sniper sooner-"

"No, no, I'm rather lucky you found him at all. They didn't even know you were there."

She felt her stomach twist inside-out as he smiled at her, that strange feeling returning. As she applied pressure to his wound, she felt as though a strange kind of energy was passing between them, as though all the little thoughts and hopes and wishes that came from her quiet place were being poured out as he held her gaze like a magnet. She was aware of the minutes sliding by, but they seemed to be an unimportant part of another world.

"I think the bleeding has stopped enough," he suddenly murmured, breaking the silence. "It doesn't even hurt at all anymore."

She pulled her hands away slowly and was getting a roll of bandage out to wrap his shoulder when he gasped. She looked up, startled, to see that he had moved the blood-soaked cloth to look at his shoulder, to find that the wound was… gone. His skin had completely sealed back over; not even a scab or scar was left.

"What… how?"

He looked up at her with an expression of awe. "Did you do that?"

"Me? What do you mean?"

"You studied with the techeuns for ten years. Healing is one of their specialties. Surely you learned some."

"That was one of the hardest- I completely sucked. They told me I "lacked motivation." I never even finished my training, that was three years ago, I- it couldn't possibly have been me…"

"Then what happened?"

She found herself suddenly tongue-tied. She had never been passionate about being a techeun and learning magic had been a source of both fear and frustration. She had watched her sisters take advantage of their powers to force her to do their dirty work, and she had watched the master techeuns and how much they cared about simply doing her jobs, and had never been able to replicate that. This was different. If want had anything to do with it, then it was possible that she could have done it. He knew her better than anyone else did, and he said that she was the only one besides his sister that had ever understood him. It seemed impossible to know someone that well and not feel such a deep affection for them.

"I don't know. Maybe I did do that. I wasn't really trying to."

He shrugged, moving his shoulder back and forth. "Either way, it feels fine now. Let's get back to the ship."

She followed him back through the woods, wondering at this strange power. Could she do it again, or was it only a true emergency and someone she really cared about that could cause this? She'd tried so hard to learn, thinking that her sisters would treat her better if she could make them proud, but it had never worked, and she had never been able to learn. The instructors, probably foreseeing that she would quit, had never given her a fair chance either.

"So, got any other hidden powers you're not telling us about?" He teased.

"Mm, no. Wait, yes. Just this:" she pulled out her knife and tossed it into the air, then caught it with her mind, letting it hover before slowly descending back into her palm. "But you've seen the real techeuns and all the crazy stuff they could do."

"So you just quit because you thought you couldn't be like them? That doesn't sound like you."

"No, it was... I didn't want to be like them. Not that it would've been a bad thing, I just felt that that wasn't what I was meant to do. My sisters would never have let me leave, and I was afraid, so I stayed. It was the dreams that did me in, though. I guess that was when I finally realized that they didn't care about me at all and that they were never going to. That was when I decided I wanted to be free. So I quit. The dreams stopped. But before I could move out and find something different, the whole station was destroyed."

"Oh, I have heard that techeuns have some pretty intense dreams. My sister has them, and she.. well, she used to tell me about them, before everything happened. Before whatever it was that I did to make her mad enough to cut me off. What were yours of?"

"Well, they weren't... They weren't mine. They were my oldest sister's. Pinar. She was the most powerful of all of us, she was all the trainer's favorite, and she became our Coven Leader when she graduated. She was learning to connect with others through dreams, and at first it was too powerful for her to control. I was seven when she first started connecting with me, and she didn't learn how to control it until I was ten. She could've learned faster, except she didn't tell anyone that it was working because she didn't want to admit that it had been real and that she'd finally told me the truth about a lot of things. The dreams were just long conversations that both of us remembered. I didn't ever have any control over them, so I always had to be honest with them, and while she was figuring it out, she had to be honest too. It's... We just couldn't help blurting out the truth as soon as a question was asked. Sometimes it felt like I didn't even know what I was saying until it came out of my mouth. But she told me about our life before we ran away when I was four. I had never known what happened because some days they told me our parents abandoned us, some days they told me they died, some days they insisted that we lived with our parents and they didn't know what I was talking about."

"By the light, that's awful, especially since you were so young and still trying to figure out what was true."

"I know. I'd started to think I was crazy until the dreams. She told me that we had all run away because our father had abused us, especially Pinar, and how much she had sacrificed and put up with to protect her younger sisters, me included. How at first when we'd run away they had tried to take care of me but I hadn't understood and I'd been difficult, how they'd decided to be a little harsher to toughen me up, and how it had gone out of hand. How when your whole life has been spinning out of control and you finally have some power, how it's too easy to use that power. How I had been completely unaware of everything that had been happening at home, how she had gone from fighting tooth and nail to keep me unaware to resenting my innocence. To me it seemed that all of a sudden they had made everything terrible and I suppose that made everything so much harder to deal with."

"Oh, Petra- being four years old and not understanding the world isn't an excuse for how they treated you!"

"I guess. But when she learned to control her words, she used them against me. The next six years I tried every night to stay awake because her dreams were my nightmares. She tormented me with question after question as I was forced to answer. Suddenly, I couldn't hide how much their words and actions had always hurt. She discovered every weakness that I had carefully hidden and exploited them, searching for wounds to throw salt in. When I was sixteen I realized I could take care of myself. I didn't have to stay with them and depend on them for a bare survival. They only cared about me as much as they could use me. So I quit, and I was going to leave. But the rest of the world was the same way, too. I only mattered when I was useful."

"I... but that's not true. You know that, right? I mean yeah, it's true, the world is like that, but that doesn't mean that it's right."

She shrugged. "There's not much of a difference."

"Yeah, there is. You matter to me. No, seriously- you have no idea how glad I am that I met you." When he smiled, she could somehow tell from the way he was looking at her that he meant it. She had never realized before today that she had always been able to tell what he was thinking just by looking into his eyes- they were so deep, so easy to get lost in.

"Don't think that I don't need this friendship with you as much as you do just because you're a Corsair and I'm a Prince. I'd say it's often the people everyone knows about that no one really knows. You're... You're the only person who's ever really tried to understand ME. My best friend... Well, he gets me as much as someone who's been around me for all four thousand years of my life can, but he's not really into secrets. Isn't that how you really know someone, though? Knowing things about them that no one else does? And my sister... Well, she's a good sister, but she thinks she knows me better than I do because she knows who I am, but she's never bothered to try and figure out what I want. She only cares about what she wants from me and if she doesn't think I can do that for her then she tries to change me to better fit her idea of who she wants me to be. But you just know me. You talk to me and you listen to me. To most people I'm Mara's little brother who exists to support her and do her bidding, but to you… I'm your friend."

"Your sister is an amazing leader but I can see how it would be really hard to live in her shadow."

"But see, no one else gets that. They think they'd love to be in my position because they don't know what it's really like. I guess…. Mara wanted all of this. She wanted to do this, she wanted to lead. I didn't. I didn't ask to be anyone's hero. I followed my sister because she's my sister and I care about her and I've always stuck by her, even when she made it difficult. Twice I've left everything behind to follow her to another world because that was what mattered most to me. And I guess it's just hard because I can't tell whether or not she'd do the same, however unlikely such a situation would be. It's been this way our whole lives- she leads and I follow- and that's not the problem. The problem is that we used to be so close, but we aren't anymore. I used to have a voice in her decisions, but now it feels like I'm chasing the clouds."

"I… I tried for years to impress my sisters, and the day I finally realized that it wasn't going to work, that I was just another mouth not worth feeding and that they were never going to care about me… that was a hard day, because I'd spent so many years convincing myself that I could somehow earn their love. But I don't think that would have been genuine. You can't earn something like that, and you shouldn't have to."

He nodded slowly. "You're right. I… that's true. Maybe if I stop trying to prove myself to her, she'll just see me and not me trying to be like her. I'm not her. And your sisters were wrong. You're not worthless at all. I care about you."

He had told her this several times, and she knew he meant it and she should believe him. But there were so many big things that scared her. She was so far below him in rank that it still surprised her that they were such good friends even with all the things they had in common. And her sisters had cared about her once. It was hard to let herself need their friendship as much as she did when it seemed like it would be so easy for him to decide that he didn't care anymore. They got back to the ship and he flew her back to the training grounds. She had almost forgotten the incident until she was leaving and he thanked her for healing him.

"You saved me several very long and irritating lectures," he told her, and suddenly he pulled her into a hug, holding her there for a few very long moments. She could feel her heart beating very hard, and his too, and his arms around her.

"Bye," he murmured in her ear, slowly releasing her.

"Bye," she whispered back, looking up at him in a rush of tangled emotions.

"Lots of work to do out there, so I'll probably see you again soon enough."

"Yeah. I'll be looking forward to it."

She got off the ship, watched him fly away leaving her very confused. The others were in the middle of training, so she returned to her little home and hid, trying to sort out what had just happened.

Why does this all have to be so confusing? I don't understand what's happening. I don't even have anyone else I could ask.

You don't know anything about having friends, because no one's ever cared about you enough to be your friend, replied the voice in her mind that always wanted her to prove herself and was always making her doubt and question her own worth.

You're being silly, said the voice that thought her a child like the rest of the world, this isn't going to go anywhere. This isn't real.

You should just ignore this. It's only going to distract you from getting what you want, advised the voice that knew she could prove herself. This had always been her loudest voice, the voice she listened to most, because it was the only one that encouraged her to action rather than reminding her of her faults.

You know exactly what's happening, and you're just afraid to admit the truth to yourself, a new voice spoke up. It was that quiet part, the one that didn't usually tell her anything. She had ignored it for years, and it had sunk into the background. It wasn't quite like any of the other voices. It wanted something, but she had never been sure what it wanted. How had it gotten so loud all of the sudden?

You care about him more than you want to admit. It's not just that he's your only friend. It's more than that. He's the only one who ever treated you like you're worth something.

Petra knew it was right, and she hated herself for it. This could not happen. This was only going to ruin everything. She should've been grateful for their friendship, but instead, she wanted more. Something she couldn't have. It wasn't possible. There was no way someone like him could ever feel that way about her. Even if he did mean what he'd said and he did care about her, it wasn't like that.

She'd just have to be satisfied with a friendship. That was all she was ever going to get and if she wasn't careful, she'd lose that too.