Just a warning, this chapter does have a few lines of dialogue that get a bit explicit in terms of sex. It's fairly innocuous, just Mustang explaining things she's learned on Luna about the existence of inter-Color romances that require the surgical alteration of both partners' "equipment" so they can have kids together, but I just thought I should warn you.
As I said earlier in the story, there will be chapters from the point of view of characters other than Shiro. With this chapter and the previous one, it was to provide new perspectives on canon events, but there will be other POV chapters that don't follow the books.
Chapter 16: Bacon and Eggs:
Pax Mess Hall
En Route to Mars
December 18th, 2840
"Can't sleep?" Darrow asked as he slid into the seat across from her.
"Lot rattling around," Mustang answered as she wrapped her knuckles against her head. "The cook's beside himself," she added. "Thinks I need a feast. Told him I just wanted bacon and eggs. Pretty sure he's disregarded everything I said. He babbled something about pheasant. Had this Earthborn accent. Hard to understand." Moments later, the Brown stumbled out of the kitchen, carrying not just bacon and eggs, but pumpkin waffles, cured ham, cheeses, sausages fruits, and a dozen other dishes as well. But surprisingly, no pheasant. His eyes turned the size of the waffles when he sees Darrow. The cook apologized for something, set the tray down, and disappeared, only to reappear a minute later with even more food.
"How much do you think we eat?" Darrow asked jokingly when he saw the tray full of more food than he was hungry for. The cook just stared at him, so Mustang thanked the man on his behalf. The Brown mumbled something inaudible and backed away, bowing as he did. The Ash Lord must eat enough food for an army if his cooking staff's default menu option is "feast," she thought to herself with a chuckle.
"I think the Ash Lord was a bit different from us," Darrow said as she pushed the fruit towards him. "Thought you didn't like bacon."
"I had it every morning on Luna," she replied with a shrug while she delicately buttered her waffles. "Reminded me of you." She added, avoiding his eyes. "Why can't you sleep?"
"Not much good at it," he answered.
"You never were," she remarked teasingly. "Except when you had a hole in your stomach. You slept like a baby then."
"I think comas don't count," he said with a laugh. The two of them talked for several minutes about everything except the things they should. Their conversation was innocent and quiet, like two moths dancing around the same fire.
"Amazing how big the beds are, even on a starship," she commented. "Mine's monstrous. Too big, really."
"Finally!" Darrow proclaimed. "Someone agrees. Half the time, I sleep on the floor."
"You too?" Mustang asked with a shake of her head. "Sometimes I hear noises and sleep in the closet, thinking if someone's coming for me they won't look there."
"I've done that," he replied. "Really does help."
"Except when the closet is big enough to fit a family of Obsidians. Then it's just as bad," she finished with a chuckle. Suddenly, she frowned. "I wonder if Obsidians cuddle."
"They don't," he answered, causing her to raise her eyebrows.
"Have you researched it?" she inquired. He finished a handful of strawberries, shrugging as she frowned at his manners.
"Obsidians believe in three types of touch. The Touch of Spring. The Touch of Summer. The Touch of Winter. After the Dark Revolt, where the Obsidians rose in arms against the iron ancestors, the Board of Quality Control debated destroying the entire Color. You know how they gave them religion, stole their technology. But what they wished to kill most of all was the incredible kinship the Obsidians then possessed. So they instructed the shaman of the tribes, bought and paid for liars, to warn against touch, saying it weakened the spirit. So now the Obsidians touch one another in sex. They touch each other to prevent death. And they touch each other to kill. No cuddling." Her mouth twisted into a small smirk. "But of course, you already knew that," he added.
"I did," she confirmed with a smile. "But sometimes it's nice to remember all that's going on inside you."
"Oh," he said, embarrassed. He looked away when she tried to hold his gaze.
"I forgot you can blush!" she exclaimed, watching him for a moment. "You probably don't know this, but one of my dissertations on Luna concentrated on mistakes in the sociological manipulation theorems used by the Board of Quality control." She paused as she delicately cut one of her sausages. "I deemed them shortsighted. The chemical sexual sterilization of the Pink genus, for instance," has led to a tragically high suicide rate within the Gardens." Of course most Golds would simply label it as inefficient, she added bitterly to herself.
"The rigidity of laws maintaining the hierarchy are so strict, they'll one day break. Fifty years from now? A hundred? Who knows? There was this one case we studied where a Gold woman fell in love with an Obsidian. They had a black market Carver alter their reproductive organs so his seed was compatible with her eggs. They were found out and both were executed, their Carvers killed. But things like this have happened a hundred times. A thousand. They're just scrubbed from the record books."
"It's terrible," Darrow said.
"And beautiful," Mustang added.
"Beautiful?" he asked, sounding repulsed. Really? She thought. I figured that you, of all people, would see the beauty in it without needing to have it pointed out to you.
"No one knows of these people," she explained. "No one but a handful of Golds with access. The human spirit tries to break free, again and again, not in hate like the Dark Revolt. But for love. They don't mimic each other. They aren't inspired by others who come before them. Each is willing to take the leap, thinking they are the first. That's bravery. And that means it's a part of who we are as people. So how long, I wonder, till a group like the Sons of Ares finds the records, broadcasts them? They did it with Persephone. The girl who sang. It's only a matter of time." She paused and squinted as she noticed that Darrow suddenly looked as if he was about to cry. "What's wrong?" she asked.
"Dissertations," he replied. "Sociology. You and I specialize in very different things. I always wondered what your life was like on Luna."
"Oh?" she remarked, eyeing him playfully. "So you thought about me?"
"Maybe," he lied.
"Day and night?" she asked rhetorically. "What is Mustang wearing? What is she dreaming about? What boy is she kiss - ?" she paused, wincing at the reminder of her recent breakup with Cassius.
"Darrow," she began, changing the subject. "I want to explain something.
"You don't have to," he replied, waving her off.
" With Cassius it – " she tried to continue before Darrow cut her off.
"Mustang," he said. "You don't owe me anything. You weren't mine. You aren't mine. You can do what you want when you want with whomever you want." He paused. "Even though he is a gorydamn jackass." She laughed, but the humor faded as quickly as it came. She looked down and shook her head.
"I wanted it to be different," Mustang murmured. "You know that."
"Mustang…" Darrow began, resting his hand on her wrist. She feels so frail compared to his harden hands. "I think I know how you feel – " She jerked her hand away from him.
"How I feel?" she asked rhetorically. He did not just say that, she thought angrily.
"I didn't mean – " he tried to backpedal before their distracted by a noise. They looked to see the cook standing there awkwardly with another tray. He tiptoed to their table, set it down, and then leaft the room, backed away in awkward silence.
"Darrow," she began, peering fiercely up at him through the strands of hair that had fallen across her face. "Shut up and listen. All my life, I've been taught to regard my family over all else. What happened with my brother at the Institute… When I handed him over to you, that set me against everything I was raised to do. But I thought that you – " she paused to take a deep breath that wavered at the end. "- were a person who earned my loyalty. And I thought that it would be so much more important if I gave it to you in that moment than to Adrius, who has never lifted a finger on my behalf. I knew it was the right thing to do, but it was a repudiation of my father, of all he taught me. Do you even know what that means? He has broken families as easily as other men break sticks. He wields unimaginable power. But more than that."
"He is the man who taught me to ride horses," she continued. "To read poems and not just the military histories. The man who stood beside me, letting me raise myself up by my own strength when I fell. The man who couldn't look at me for three years after my mother died. That is the man I rejected you for. No," she stopped, correcting herself. "Not for you. For living differently, living for more. More than pride. At the Institute you and I decided to break the rules, to be decent in a place of horror. So we made an army of loyal friends instead of slaves. We chose to be better. Then you spat in the face of that by leaving to become one of my father's killers."
"No," she said, putting her finger in the air. "Don't speak. It's not your turn just because I pause." I am going to get this off my gorydamn chest now and get it over with, she told herself as she gathered her thoughts, pushing away her plate as she did so.
"Now, I'm sure you understand that I felt lost. One, because I thought I'd found someone special in you. Two, because I felt you were abandoning the idea that gave us the ability to conquer Olympus. Consider that I was vulnerable. Lonely. And that perhaps I fell into Cassius's bed because I was hurt and needed a slave to my pain. Can you imagine that? You may answer."
"I suppose," Darrow answered sheepishly, heistant as he squirmed on his cushion.
"Good," Mustang replied, her lips forming a hard line. "Now shove that idea up your ass. I am not some frill-wearing tramp. I am a genius. I say this because it is a fact. I am smarter than any person you've ever met, except perhaps my twin. My heart does not make my brain a fool. I sought out a relationship with Cassius for the same reason I let the Sovereign think she was turning me against my father: to protect my family." She paused as she looked down at her food.
"I've always been able to manipulate people," she went on. "Men, women, it makes no difference. Cassius was a walking wound, Darrow, raw and bloody despite the fact that it has been two years since you killed Julian. I saw it in him in a second, and I knew how I could make him love me. I gave him someone who would listen, someone who would fill the void." The sternness in her voice faded as she looked around, hoping for an escape from the conversation she started.
"I made him think he could not live without me," she continued. "I knew it was the only thing that could keep the rest of my house safe. I knew it was the best weapon I could wield in this game. Over time, I did develop feelings for him, but still I felt so cold. So horrible. Like I was the cruel witch snaring Odysseus, making him fall in love, keeping him for my own selfish aims. It seemed so logical. And when he put his arms around me, I felt like I was drowning. Like I was lost, suffocating under the weight of all I'd done, suffocating knowing there was a life ahead of me with someone who, despite the attracting I had felt during our courtship, I ultimately did not love.
"Yet it was for family," she finished, shaking her head, tears building in her eyes. "It was for the people I love even if they don't deserve it. Then you walked into the gala, and… and it was like the ground had broken open to swallow me. I'd broken things off with Cassius already but still I felt like a fraud. A wicked girl who'd contrived a reason to do something stupid." She paused as she tried to wipe her eyes as the tears began to fall. "Can't you see why I did it? I didn't want you to die. I don't want you to die. Not like my brother, Claudius. Not like Pax. I would have done anything to stop it."
"I can stop it," Darrow said.
"You're not invincible, Darrow," she retorted. "I know you think you are. But one day, you'll find out you aren't as strong as you think you are, and I'll be alone."
"You're not wicked," he said as he took her hand in his. "You are not cruel." She shook her head as she tried to pull away, but Darrow took her jaw between the fingers of his right hand and tilted her head until she was looking directly into his eyes. "And what you do for the people you love cannot be judged. Do you understand?" He repeated himself, deepening his voice. The second time she nodded.
"You can't trust him," she said quietly.
"Who?" Darrow asked, startled by her sudden words.
"My twin," she whispers, as if the Jackal was sitting in the corner of the room with them. And even if we are alone, she thought. I wouldn't put it past Adrius to have listening devices all over the ship. "He's not a man like you," she told him. "He's something else. When he looks at us, when he looks at people, he sees sacks of bone and meat. We don't really exist to him." She clutched his hand as he frowned. "Darrow, listen to me. He is the monster they don't know how to write stories about. You cannot trust him."
"I don't trust him," he said. "But I need him."
"We can win this war without him," she replied. Her plea for Darrow to break off the alliance he'd forged with her brother before the gala went unsaid.
"I thought you said I wasn't strong enough," he protested.
"You're not," she answered a smile that quickly turns into a lopsided grin. "Not by yourself. You need me."
"I wish it was that simple," he replied. "On the subject of people we don't trust, though, there's something suspicious about that lancer who came back with you. Shiro au Terranova. I heard his story from Tactus, but where's he really from?" Despite his tone, Mustang knew he didn't mean the question as an accusation or insinuation that Shiro couldn't be trusted. Darrow knew her too well and knew that she wouldn't allow someone to accompany them in their escape from Luna if she didn't trust them completely. And he also knew her well enough to know when she had fabricated a story to convince her father to hire the twenty year old lancer. He was just genuinely curious to know what the real story was.
"You're probably not going to believe this," she said nervously. "But he's from the past." Darrow's face scrunched up in confusion.
"What do you mean?" he asked.
"I mean he simply appeared in the Citadel gardens on Luna out of thin air in a flash of light," she answered. "There was no sign of malfunctioning gravBoots or PulseArmor, and when he woke up, he was completely ignorant of the hierarchy." Darrow rested his chin against his hand as he contemplated what she was telling him.
"There was also the fact that he was wearing armor that was nothing like any kind of armor that our society had ever seen," she added. "His hair was black and white, and his eyes were gray." Now Darrow leaned forward in his chair. "And time travel was the best answer you could come up with?"
"Of course," she replied. "Once you've run out of logical explanations for something, you have to start considering the impossible." As the two rekindled the close friendship they had shared at the Institute, they continued to talk for several more minutes about the different theories of time travel before Darrow finally became tired enough to return to his stateroom.
All the dialogue after Mustang saying "Not by yourself. You need me" is stuff I came up with on my own because the scene in the books changes right after that line.
Because Reds mining under the surface of Mars only live till their thirties, they basically get married as soon as they finish puberty. Darrow was married at sixteen to his childhood friend Eo. Darrow was content to just live his life as a minor and provide for Eo, but she was the one trying to stir up rebellion. After they're caught sneaking into a restricted area at her urging, they're both whipped as punishment. But then Eo deliberately escalates the situation by singing a song of rebellion, the punishment for which is immediate execution, trying to make herself a martyr on purpose. After her death, the Sons of Ares basically turn the footage of her singing and execution into a viral internet video. Nobody outside of the mine and the Sons knows her name, so she's known by the moniker of Persephone.
Terminology:
Gardens: The schools where Pinks learn how to serve Golds both in and out of the bed.
Olympus: The flying island that functions as the Institute's equivalent of a teacher's lounge.