What happens to writing when the music changes? Subconsciously, at least, some character's fate could have shifted.
0o0o0o
Yao had described the Russian starships as wintery in colour and ornate in details. Kiku had become accustomed to the delicate curves in the wood as he paced the conference room he'd been left in, reading again and again the papers in his hands.
Security, they'd said. Leakage of information. Protocol. When he'd turned up at the leader's door in the dead of night with papers in his hands and a challenge on his lips, he had sealed whatever decision he had made. He'd chosen condemnation of his future with the pictures permanently saved under his name, the messages flung to the unknown.
Whatever words they used, the message was clear. If he could not prove it was the leader's doing, his last chance of saving Yao from the inevitable something that hovered all about him would be lost. And if he did?
Kiku felt sick at the thought of the decisions he'd have to make if he proved Yao had been drugged. The questions he would have to ask, the ones he was already asking. Why? Was it even by the leader? How? To prove a point? To push a bill? What was the plan?
Was it fatal?
Not now, Kiku decided, wrapping the panic away and setting it aside for later. Later he could lay awake and worry that Yao's heart would keep getting worse and worse and worse.
He hoped Feliciano had passed the message on. Getting the photos from a Roman noble of a battle wing would be too much exposure, too much danger. The information would be safe with him. The leader wouldn't throw everything away for that. Not for Yao.
He hoped. He hoped Yao was just someone to duel and further the fleet's progress.
'I apologize for the treatment, Ambassador Kiku.' The door slid silently shut behind the man. Kiku nodded. The papers in his hands seemed to glow in the pale, soft light. 'You have been here for hours.'
'My escorts have been generous,' Kiku said. 'I know that it is simply protocol.' The leader set down a glass of wine. Kiku's eyes were drawn to it, to the scarlet, so much like Yao's robes. The leader-his, and this one-both seemed far away.
'Where did you get the papers?'
Emil's wide, shining eyes. Promise me.
'I downloaded them as the original tests were running. As it is to preserve the privacy, they were all but deleted after Yao had left.'
'Why did you download them?'
Kiku's mouth curled into a smile. 'I felt it was my duty as Nobleman Yao's prodigy.'
'To keep him safe?' the man asked.
'To watch over him,' Kiku amended.
The man rubbed a finger over the lip of his glass. 'It was wrong to invade his privacy.'
'I know. I apologized to him. I had thought the circumstances warranted my caution.'
'So he knows?' the leader asked, staring down into the glass he'd set on the table.
'Yao is aware of my concerns.'
'Then I will call him.' The man stood, blue eyes steady on Kiku's. 'We will find out whether his balances have been tampered with.' Kiku lifted his chin. He was surprised, almost, and his whole body hummed with anticipation. The Russian leader inclined his head, waiting for his agreement. Kiku toyed with the idea of saying no. Perhaps it was a bluff.
'That sounds agreeable,' he said instead. The papers crunched in his hands. He didn't know what to do with them. His plan had fallen short. The sourness of failure threatened to choke him.
The leader made to go. Kiku rose.
'Wait, please.'
'Yes?' The man asked.
'I will take care of Yao. I know how to help him is anything goes wrong,' Kiku announced. He hoped his voice didn't shake. The man watched impassively. 'The finances. I will assist him with them.'
The silence stretched. The Russian leader nodded his agreement coolly. The sourness faded, pushed back just enough to make him bold, to ask again.
'And It would be best if his results were not made public knowledge.' The next words caught in his chest, and he wondered if he was brave enough to voice them. 'Neither of us should know, but his successor is more privy to his life and health than most.'
The leader stared back at him. Kiku's heart thumped inside his chest. He waited.
The leader inclined his head almost too much to be sincere, but it was agreement enough. Kiku had done what he could. It was enough.
They let him go after that. Kiku walked to Yao's rooms, body aching from hunger and stress, and wondered if he'd would have stayed any more hours if he'd said no.
0o0o0o
Yao was barely back after the meeting with the Russian leader when someone knocked on his door.
'Let yourself in, Ivan!' he called, still sprawled out on his bed, still worried and exhausted enough to register three seconds too late that Ivan did not knock like that, and he was off the bed and running to the door, heart pounding, mind racing, glorious relief filling his body.
'Yao, you-'
'Kiku!' he gasped. 'Kiku, god, where have you been?'
'I…' Kiku looked taken aback. His hands twisted in his pockets. 'It is not important.'
'Kiku, you've been gone all day. Nobody could reach you. There was no sign of you. Where were you?' Yao demanded, relief souring to anger. Kiku pressed his lips together.
'I was discussing matters with a few people from the Russian council.'
'And that took all day? I called you!' Yao shouted. He shoved the door shut and pointed Kiku into a chair. 'Where were you? Really?'
'Yao, please calm down,' Kiku said almost pleadingly, hands curling, bunching up his silks. Yao scoffed.
'What were you doing?' he said. Something in the back of his head twitched. He ignored it. Kiku held his gaze for what seemed like ages.
'It concerned these,' he said finally. He reached into his pocket and pulled out papers with heavy creases. Yao held out his hand for them. Kiku offered them slowly.
He smoothed the papers out, barely glancing at them.
'This was important enough to make you disappear for an entire day?'
'Yao,' Kiku insisted, quietly, firmly. The voice broke some sort of haze inside his head. 'Please sit down and look at the papers.'
Almost gingerly, Yao did. The numbers leaped out at him, the graphs and statistics and his name at the top.
'They're your tests after the faint.' Kiku came closer and pointed at a few lines of numbers. 'These are what say you had been drugged.' Yao drank in the images, the paper that seemed precious now. Kiku bent closer. 'Feliciano told you?'
'Yes.' Yao gently folded the papers back up. 'Where do we put this?'
'I'll take it.'
'I can.'
'I promised someone I wouldn't let anyone else get blamed,' Kiku said softly. Yao relinquished the papers, and Kiku slid them back into his pockets with a sort of tenderness.
He straightened back up. Yao nodded to his pocket.
'Why weren't you answering your device?'
'It's...broken,' Kiku confessed. It was too dangerous to keep it after the pictures had been taken. He knew there were people who could pull the images from his device again, no matter how thoroughly he tried to wipe it. He thought of the shy, earnest young man he'd met only once. He had programmed two pieces of machinery, he had written the code for what kept Ivan breathing. Extracting the pictures would be easy.
'We need to know how you got drugged.'
'It was in my wine.'
Kiku jolted, and Yao half-rose from his seat. 'Kiku?'
'Nothing. It's simply that…' He shook his head. 'How did you know?'
'I...don't.' Yao frowned down at his hands. 'But trust me. I don't think it could have come any other way.'
Kiku settled back into his seat, tense. 'Who gave you the wine?'
'Natalya.' He found himself pinching at his collar, and dropped his hands with a laugh. Perhaps her reveal had been to disarm him. Perhaps it was all a joke. Perhaps she was just a pawn like him.
'Ivan was...a better ambassador,' Kiku said. Yao nodded. Kiku gave him a small smile. 'You are barely careful with seeing each other.'
Yao forced a smile, but his pulse jumped. Ivan had been careful to come late at night and behind closed doors, but the threat might not be empty.
He'd almost forgotten, somehow.
'He was,' was all Yao said. Kiku got up to leave. Yao watched him go.
A long time down the hallway towards the observatory Yao had forgotten to do again, Kiku wondered if he should have stayed.
0o0o0o
Ivan set down the letter. Another invitation to the leader's boardroom. He could refuse. He could run away to Yao and burn away the hours in his fast, hot angers. But he wouldn't, because at least he knew that his leader's jealousy would simply damage his machinery when he left. If he ran, he had no idea of the punishment that would happen.
That was the game he played. Predictable or unknown. He'd chosen predictable all the times before. He knew what he would do if he became an ambassador. He knew what would happen after the meetings. He knew what he would face. Yao was not predictable, and now he was not an ambassador and he didn't know what was happening or what to do to fix the falling-apart world and everything was spiraling out of his control.
That was the price he had to pay for loving Yao, he supposed, and shrugged on his coat to leave.
0o0o0o
When Ivan came into the room, it was silent. He sat down and arranged his scarf. He waited for his leader to make the first move, and he did.
'How has your job been treating you?' the man asked. Ivan hummed nonchalantly.
'It is not as interesting as being an ambassador was.'
'You found being an ambassador too interesting,' he said pointedly. Ivan laughed.
'Perhaps.'
The words hovered between them. Ivan waited for the man to tell him that he knew he'd been sneaking out to see Yao, that he knew about the file Ivan had hidden in his floorboard, that he knew everything because Katyusha was his doing.
The anvil hung over him and Ivan waited and waited and waited and somewhere inside of him hoped he could keep Yao out of the fallout.
'Would you like a drink, Ivan?' his leader asked instead. Ivan arranged his scarf again.
'Yes, please.'
The wine was red and he watched it faintly stain the sides of the glass. The colour was of nebulae and silk and Yao. It had been too long since any of those beautiful dangerous things. He suddenly ached for him.
'What did you want to discuss with me?' Ivan asked, dragged his mind away from Yao. His leader watched him intensely over the rim of his glass.
'What do you think is happening in our fleets, Ivan? Ours and the Middle fleet.' He set the glass down with a crisp sound. 'It is important to know what the people think.'
Ivan thought of the paperwork scattered across Yao's desk, the shadows under his eyes and his tired laugh, the cracking look in his eyes when Ivan had kissed him outside the auditorium before he spoke. He wanted to say a mess. He wanted to say chaos and trying to figure things out.
He said, 'I don't know much.'
His leader studied him and said, 'That's unfortunate.'
Ivan shut his eyes from the searching of his gaze and longed again for Yao. Perhaps, perhaps after the meeting was done and he fixed his brokenness and he went back to the observatory again, Yao would be waiting and he could just forget. For an hour or two.
0o0o0o
If you remember the lines of a song, do the cameos slip in?
:: Catching the strains of a song and writing down the one line of lyrics long after you've forgotten the melody or how the words were sung
