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Juno had never been to Venus before, but despite this, he had certain expectations of what it looked like. Part of it was what he’d expected— the tall, rounded buildings that gleamed crystalline and oblong— but the suburbs, the uglier parts of town he knew had once been there were gone.
He stared at the apartments alongside the road, obviously new, not a single stain of rot or mold creeping up their walls, lined up in identical rows beside each other. They alternated in shades of forest green, navy, and a charming brick-red down the streets. The sidewalk was flat, weirdly so, and he swore he could see actual crosswalks, the proper led kind, shining in the street twenty or so paces away from where he and Nureyev stood.
“This is… quite different from the Venus I knew the last time I was here,” Nureyev didn’t stare, but he looked to be taking in everything around them very quickly. “It certainly seems. Well… cleaner. A nice appearance, though I don’t suppose the underside of this place will have changed at all.”
“Maybe,” Juno responded once he remembered how to.
Seventy-five percent of the planet’s population fell beneath the poverty line as of his twelfth birthday . He remembered looking at a picture of Venus in his ratty textbook, cover long since torn off, and confusing it for the road next to their apartment complex. Venus had a homeless crisis worse than Mars, and he remembered eyeing that statistic with disbelief in elementary, trying to imagine Oldtown, but worse .
Nureyev walked up to a man, hands in his pockets, and Juno admired how the long step of his gait shifted so that they were shorter. He looked like the kind of person always running to keep pace with others— a difficult feat, Juno imagined, with his already long legs.
“Hello.” he pulled Juno against his hip, where he slotted in with practiced ease, settling into the role that had grown so familiar to him in the past year. “My wife and I were looking for our in-laws’ place, but my,” Nureyev’s laugh was that of a stranger’s, sociable and outgoing, “everything has changed so much since our last visit.”
“I get that. It must be a shock coming back to visit and finding everything changed.” He greeted them amicably. “It’s Liah, by the way. What street are you looking for?”
Liah seemed friendly, just a nice guy trying to be helpful. Rita would call him antisocial for it— but Juno felt uncomfortable talking to him. He wasn’t exactly cross-eyed, but he was... unfocused. Maybe it was because when he spoke to them, he looked right through them as though they weren’t really there.
“Qilt Street,” Nureyev told him. They exchanged direction and thanks, and before the conversation could draw to a polite end, Nureyev asked his question. “You don’t happen to know what exactly led to this development in the neighbourhood? I only ask because it seems so drastic a change.”
The tone of curious wonderment in his voice was exactly the kind of thing Juno would have expected from a tourist, and he quietly applauded his partner’s skill.
“Oh, yeah. There was this whole thing on Mars right,” he waved a hand, “something something, Newtown I think it was called? Yeah, a bunch of the folks here saw it and were like ‘we want that.’ So, they pressured the mayor into changing things, and well...” Lian shook his head in disbelief, no, amazement.
“Indeed.” Nureyev had to reply after a moment, and Juno realized he was contributing less to their on-the-spot aliases than a partner should, but damn it, he couldn’t think straight.
“Mmm, she’s really taking credit for it. Gonna use it as her platform for the next election, I think. Couple of people are upset about that, but not me. You see this'' he gestured to his clothes, composed of a neat, blue button-up and slacks. He wore unscuffed shoes, brown and leather. “Before three months ago, I hadn’t lived in a house for four years. As long as she keeps it up, I could care less if it was Roman— Ra—”
“Ramses,” Juno breathed, and at some point, Nureyev’s hand had slipped around his waist, where it rubbed soothingly against his side.
“Him, that’s right. Did some great stuff, that guy.” Liah nodded. “Don’t mind if we take some of it for ourselves here, though.”
He leaned into Nureyev’s arms, still slung around him, and tried to forget he had any kind of personal connection to the deceased political figure. It couldn’t be enough that his name was plastered all over Mars, could it? And he drew away from the thought, resentful and darkly unamused that Mars was the new example for a better way of life.
They said their goodbyes and headed off to the meet point. Nureyev’s hand had gone from his hip to his arm, and he let himself be led forward. Juno might have stood there for hours, frozen, if he didn’t have that hand there to guide him.
Past the dull ache of his heart, racing a rhythm of panic in his chest, Juno realized what was so strange about Lian. The thing that had been off about that guy. He’d only felt weird to Juno because he was familiar; Liah had the same look he’d seen from Hyperion citizens for months after the Newtown incident. It had taken him by surprise in this new-but-familiar place, this New Newtown, a literal world away from where he would’ve expected it.
It was something about his eyes, the way they’d lingered on the buildings behind them, almost disbelieving, like he could hardly believe it himself. A tentative happiness— one he wasn’t sure he should let himself have just in case it wasn’t real. Just in case he reached out to grab it and found there was nothing there but pretty dreams and a lot of smoke.
Juno sat forward as the crackling pit of flames lit up the underside of his face. A flashlight in the dark was fine when you were six, sure, but there was something about the light of a fire, dancing across the others’ eyelids, their cheekbones, that put force behind his words. He wasn’t Juno Steel, former private eye, current criminal— he was a curator. Of stories and words that made Buddy lean forward, had Vespa rest her elbows on her knees, and put a rapture in Rita’s eyes.
“And when the storm at last dissipated, all that was left behind was the smell of rain and her locket from the first time they met.” They were still looking at him, waiting for something else, “Um. The end.”
“Mistah Steel, that’s it?” Rita reached for the bag of marshmallows that seemed to have made its way to her seat rather than any of the others, and stuffed a handful in her mouth, muffling the sad noises she made, “But thaf sho thaad.”
“Way to kill the mood, Steel.”
“Hey, you guys asked for a story—”
“I, myself have many stories that do not end so sombrely.”
“Shut up, I mean story stories. The fake, not-real kind,” He shot back at Jet, “So you can stop being sad about it ‘cause it’s not real. That’s the whole point. If it was, you’d have no reason to stop feeling crappy because it actually happened.”
Rita gulped down her mass of white fluff. “That was almost poetic, Boss! Really, if you just took out somma the swear words, you could trademark that kinda thing. Make for some real nice writin', all sweet and— and metabolic— watermelon— no—”
“Melancholy?” Nureyev offered from Juno’s side. He hadn’t been able to bring himself to look at his face since he started the story in case he got distracted as he so often did around the man. His eyes were impossibly bright by the light of the flame— or maybe that was just the way he watched Juno.
“Yeah, that.” He silently took Nureyev’s hand, grinning as his partner smiled without looking at him, face still turned toward Rita.
“I thought your story was beautiful, dear,” Nureyev turned to kiss him, lips brushing the skin of his forehead lightly, more tender than any proper kiss, “You have quite the voice for storytelling. There’s an art to it when you’re weaving your tale, and you look so intense. Focused.”
“I agree with Pete,” Buddy poked at the fire with a long stick, sending glowing worms wriggling through the air, “People from Mars— they have such a way of performing. Remember those Kanagawa streams, Jet? Not to my taste personally, but certainly very compelling. Addictive, almost. And there was that other thing, those children’s movies.” She snapped her fingers in the air twice, glancing to Jet who shrugged in that way that was really just a slow blink. “Andromeda! Yes, that’s right. Wonderfully imaginative, though the third movie was a bit of a letdown, I remember.”
“It’s called ‘Andromeda, the Chain-Mail Warrior,’ Bud, and it wasn’t that good.” Vespa crossed her arms and scowled, and she seemed almost upset with her words. “Pretty shit if you ask me.”
Juno focused on the heat of the flames against his eyes. Apart from the amber glow it cast over their faces, it made the shadows look alive, writhing and dancing around the edges of the campsite where the warmth faded. He could feel Nureyev’s hand in his, the skin hot and dry, but his fingers were soft where they weren’t callused, though those too were smoothened by his morning routine involving some kind of moisturizer, Juno knew.
“Miss Vespa! What d’ya have against Andromeda? She’s only the bravest fighter in all of Polaris itself—”
“She can’t be the best in Polaris if she can’t find her way back, can she?” Juno’s distraction flickered away as feeble as the shadows withering in the face of crackling sparks.
The topic had switched so quickly into unfamiliar territory, subjects he’d pretty much never planned on touching, and now that they were being shoved into his face he couldn’t help but be consumed by his thoughts. Should he be defending Sarah’s work? For so long, he’d operated on this foundational base that he didn’t owe her anything, and maybe that was still true. But he didn’t exactly hate her anymore, did he? Did that make him obligated to defend her now?
It didn’t matter, Juno thought firmly. Sarah Steel was not alive to hear her virtue be defended, and she wouldn’t thank him for it if she was. It didn’t matter, because Andromeda wasn’t her legacy, because someone had stolen it away and now it never would be.
He found he was wound tight as a wire when a hand shifted to his knee and he had to force himself to relax. Nureyev gave him a confused smile. A silent, are you okay ? Juno squeezed his hand instead of forcing a grin back.
“...just saying what’s the point if it’s gonna end crappily,” Vespa growled across the fireplace to an outraged Rita, who had declared herself at multiple points within his earshot, ‘the-biggest-Andromeda-fan-and-that-includes-you-Mistah-Steel’ to his groans that she could keep the title all she wanted. Mind you, this was after they had almost been murdered on the damned ride in Polaris Park and she barfed up carnival junk into the toilet for twenty minutes at the office while he stood there and worried. She was pretty attached
Couldn’t she have fixated on literally any other story?
“Is it the lack of happy ending that you don’t like?” Buddy told her fiancé, who looked at her with something akin to betrayal. Juno could feel himself lighten, hooking onto this new piece of information as it carried him away from his train of thought.
“ You like happy endings?” he said, delighted as she swung her focus toward him and away from Buddy.
“Steel,” Vespa began to rasp warningly, but he paid no attention to the danger in her… everything. “Don’t you—”
“And you’re telling me, you don’t just like happy endings,” Juno emphasized his words disbelievingly, and pointed at her, accusing, “You’re willing to throw the lot away if it doesn’t have a happily ever after.”
“Says the lady that cried when I found Bud,” She linked arms with Buddy, who chuckled fondly. “Bit of a sap yourself, huh, Mister hardened-criminal.”
“Love, I would appreciate it if you didn’t use me as a part of your strategy to one-up Juno,” Buddy said, sounding for all the world like she couldn’t care less whether she did or not. Juno was struck by the urge to do something stupid and unnecessary, like kiss Nureyev. I’ve got my own happy ending , a small part of him crowed victoriously, growing less alien with each day.
“Not what we’re talking about, and anyone would have cried, okay?” Juno retorted, fighting back the urge to use his boyfriend as a showpiece. He refocused on the argument that he was winning. “And I’m not the one who treats emotional vulnerability like it’s contagious.” Anymore , he tacked on mentally, grateful that no one added that part for him, though the Big Guy had lifted a single eyebrow at his statement, which, yeah, okay. Fair.
“I do not believe I have seen this Andromeda series,” the Big Guy stated mildly, which worked at the very least to draw a long, dramatic gasp from Rita.
“Mistah Jet, ohmygosh. We gotta watch!” She insisted, hand reaching for the marshmallow bag, now empty. “They’re a staple of Martian culture!”
He felt Nureyev sit up straighter at his side, leaning forward to interject. “Speaking of, I have a few stories myself about Martian culture, including the media, I suppose,” he dropped in before his voice audibly brightened and he moved on to other subjects a little more obviously interesting to him. “There are actually a lot of different historical events that initially took root on Mars relevant to the rest of the universe because of how it was the first planet to be colonized after Earth. For instance—”
“Yeah, Mistah Ransom, but I’m talkin’ culture. The important stuff like streams.” Juno could practically hear the high-pitched dog whistle Nureyev’s brain was emitting as the thought of streams being the most important part of modern Martian civilization sank in. “Anyway, the Andromeda series is great, everyone loves it!”
“I just told the entire crew it’s shi—”
“Everyone!” Rita repeated, teeth clenched together so the word came out strained. “And if they don’t, maybe they should start re-valuatin’ their opinion and admit they have bad taste.”
“They’re pretty good,” Juno admitted.
Despite her declaration that everyone loved Andromeda, Rita’s voice was surprised. “Wow, Mistah Steel, I thought you hated everythin’ about NorthStar.”
“It’s not that bad. Parts are kind of questionable, sure, but there’s some quality stuff in the mix.” He defends weakly. “Some of the writers were a bit— they were kind of shit at their jobs.”
He wasn’t sure if he was talking about Sarah Steel or Jack Takano at this point.
Buddy’s seemingly endless patience for Andromeda-related debate did eventually run out and the conversation switched to other topics as they moved on.
He stayed out of the rest of the conversation, using Nureyev as an excuse as he tucked his head into the crook of his neck, which made Vespa briefly interrupt her own tale with a disgusted noise. Nureyev didn’t seem to mind and instead rested his own head on Juno’s, who closed his eyes to the feel of his hair brushing against Juno’s own. He inhaled and breathed in the scent of Nureyev’s rose shampoo, let soft black strands tickle his forehead, and actually did feel a little better.
His shirt was clean and made of nice, silky material and Juno grumbled when it shifted beneath him. “Sorry, dear.” Warm lips pressed a kiss to his forehead and he opened his eyes to see the long expanse of skin reaching down Nureyev’s neck.
Everyone else was packing up, he could see Rita’s face sticking out of a violent magenta sleeping bag, curled up like a big neon worm in front of the fire. God, that was right, Buddy wanted them to sleep out here for bonding instead of back in the ship.
Juno slipped off the log as Nureyev went to grab their sleeping bags. Vespa and Buddy were nowhere he could see, and he figured if they’d snuck off into the forest together or something, he didn’t really want to know. Jet peered up at him from over the grill that’d been sizzling with sim-burgers earlier that night and closed the flap of the lid with a clang. He winced and glanced at Rita who didn’t look like she’d even stirred at the noise. Juno quietly wished he’d been able to crash on something the way she had on that bag of marshmallows, just so he wouldn’t have to feel the cold, hard ground beneath him while he slept.
“Juno,” Jet called him over and he joined him at the grill obligingly, “would you be able to help me carry Buddy’s IV back to the ship?”
“Sure,” he agreed and after a moment of maneuvering, decided to carry the long metal pole on his shoulder. “Be back, babe,” Juno was glad for the extra cover of night that hid his face when Nureyev responded with a blown kiss.
“Bye, love.” Juno forced his smile into an exaggerated grimace but knew Nureyev had seen it when he glimpsed him grinning smugly as he turned away.
They walked in silence for a few minutes, Juno jumping at every branch and stick that crossed their path. Did people ever get used to feeling like they were walking on broken glass all the time? He scowled at the ground, and then stopped as he saw a humorous gleam enter the Big Guy’s eyes, crow's feet crinkling in an amused manner.
“Are you alright?” He asked, and Juno let the frown slide over his face again as he shot the earthen floor a dirty look.
“Yeah,” Juno said, “just haven’t gotten used to… forests I guess. Sticks and stuff.” There was something sticky on the bottom of his shoe and when he raised it, he saw it was brown and wet. All of a sudden, he missed Martian sand, powdery and dry, clinging to every glass surface and in the toes of your shoes, but at least not disgusting like this mud .
“No, I am speaking of the conversation we had earlier,” The Big Guy drew him away from his thoughts, “You seemed perturbed.”
The heat of the fire and his brief drop into lowered consciousness blurred the memory, but the discomfort came back easily. “Oh. You don’t need to worry, Big Guy,” he reassured, “perturbed is just my natural state.” Juno focused on the metal IV, warm now with the heat of his fingers, but didn’t hesitate to make eye contact with the Big Guy.
“Hmm,” His attempt to distract from the topic fell through and Juno looked away from Jet’s knowing gaze. “Well, the walk to the Carte Blanche is not very long, but should you feel the urge to speak the concerns I’m certain you do in fact have, please feel free to do so.”
“Look, I’m allowed my secrets, alright?”
A silence swelled between them as the Big Guy seemed to be mulling over his next words.
“I’m sorry if I came across as prying. That was not my intention. I had hoped to alleviate my worry by asking after the state of your emotional well-being.”
“Oh.” He said, feeling like a dick. Concern for his emotional well-being. Juno didn’t have to share his thoughts, but he didn’t exactly need to snap after anyone asking if he was alright. He tried not to think about doing the same to Rita through the door of his office, as she knocked and fretted at the door, only for him to groan or snap back an answer.
He’d told Nureyev some stuff about himself, and he hadn’t exactly died, had he? Buddy probably knew more about him now from his own mouth than because of any research she’d initially done (he hoped), so what was he so afraid of?
“I… have some personal stakes in Andromeda,” Juno shared, and felt doubt rise in his throat like bile and regret and quickly added, “Look, we really don’t need to talk about it, but I appreciate the concern.”
The Big Guy nodded, seemingly satisfied with the meager response he’d offered. “I understand. I will not watch the series then in order to remain respectful of your boundaries.”
Something made a clicking noise from his right hand, the one not lugging around their grill, and Juno blinked, surprised to see the dark outline of the Carte Blanche glow through the crevices of an opening hatch. (Why were they putting the IV back on the ship if Buddy was sleeping with them in the woods?)
“No, that’s—that’s alright,” he said, placing down the IV beside their grill against the wall of the garage. “You don’t need to do that for me. I might even join you if you do watch.” He followed after Jet down the ramp and the garage’s hatch closed behind them. “Maybe,” Juno muttered.
“Then I will welcome your presence.” There was something about Jet’s face that seemed warm, even in the cold night air far away from any open flame or source of heat. “Know that you are not alone in struggling with your past, and that I am not solely referring to myself when I say this. I believe the others among us would understand as well.” Though he made no overt move to comfort Juno, talking to him felt weirdly reassuring, like he knew whatever he threw at the Big Guy wouldn’t shake him.
“Right, thanks,” Juno said, relieved that he’d taken his reluctance to speak about a cartoon of all things at face value. “But I think Buddy’s got the market cornered on the ‘talk about your feelings’ thing.” The glow of the campfire cast an amber light on Jet’s face as they made their way back to the campsite.
“Then I leave you in her far more capable hands,” He said. “Goodnight, Juno.”
Juno met Nureyev’s eyes, brighter under the sunshine glow of their fire, and a smile came easily to his face when he responded. “Yeah. Night.” He joined his partner, letting the Big Guy gather his own enormous bag, and readied himself to ask about Nureyev’s endless knowledge about Martian history.
The bright light of his comms screen was glaring in the dark and Juno squinted at it irritatedly. Talking to Buddy sounded good and all, but the only time he’d ever heard about Ramses’ past identities was during a drug-induced memory dredged up from when he was four. When Juno was six, he’d convinced himself he was present for the initial evolution of sewer rabbits and remained utterly convinced of this fact until he learned otherwise at eight in elementary.
It had felt real, the terror, the grin on Benzaiten’s face, and… Turbo. It was as real as dialing Ma furiously after she called him about her missing pills, as missing a shot that could have taken down one more criminal, as the unrelenting terror and excitement that had become all adrenaline seeing Nureyev sitting on the hood of the Ruby 7.
But Jack Takano existed, and when Juno typed his name into his search engine, a picture of him popped up.
The shape of his cheekbones was higher. He was clean shaven, and completely unrecognizable from the Mayor he’d known. He was also young, far younger than in Juno’s memories; a man at the beginning of his career, with a full life ahead of him and brimming with potential even among the cutthroat Martian entertainment industry.
And all Juno saw was the man that’d walked into their home and left after hollowing it out so completely it never recovered. That was Jack Takano, and Juno recognized him, hazily, but he knew him, and now, seeing him while wide awake, he remembered the way he’d smiled, with his mouth instead of his eyes, the way he’d always worn the brightest earrings, neon orange spirals, or pink triangles whenever he came to visit. Turbo had been wearing bright blue circles when he spoke to Juno.
He closed his comms, shutting his eyes tightly. Juno dragged a hand over his face, and pushed back on Rita’s swivel chair. Now he had confirmation, and it was surreal to know truly somewhere outside his own mind. Looking at him was like seeing a nightmare come to life.
But at least now Juno knew for certain, and that certainty put stable earth beneath his feet. Now he had a foundation.
She found the toy on the streets of Jibir Gaber. It was ratty, the red paint on the little sphere hinge on its arm had been chipped away and there were two little black skid marks on the back of its helmet. Well-loved, or not very well-loved at all. It’d looked lonely, discarded on the streets of the marketplace. She guessed it probably wasn’t cared for all that well.
Rita gave the street a quick search for a kid, some snot-nosed, weeping child, inconsolable at the loss of their lifelong friend, but there was no teary tantrum or wailing infant to be found. So, she pocketed it, already thinking of how she would line up her collection of knick-knacks to fit the addition of— she squinted at the cursive name on its chest, but that too had faded past recognition.
“That’s it for me. You ready to head out?” Vespa had a bag in her hands full of produce and groceries, the fresh and non-perishable kind, but Rita knew her pockets would be full of those canisters, polish for her knives, she’d been told. “Got everything?”
“That’s it for me, Miss Vespa.”
She’d really just tagged along to look around. They never ran any sort of farmer's market back on Mars, the acid rain didn’t do well with the products, but hey, life’s little surprises, right? Now, she had something to show for the trip.
Miss Vespa had started walking away like she didn’t care whether Rita was ready to head back or not, but her walking was slower than usual and Rita appreciated her waiting.
Miss Vespa was one of those people that cared in less obvious ways. Small things that were hard to notice. She was kinda like Mistah Steel in that she didn’t like people knowing she liked them, but that’s okay. Rita noticed.
The first thing she did when she got back was reorganize her desk space. This was what she liked so much about cleaning. It gave her a chance to remember all the places and memories in the little objects and items she owned. And maybe that was why nothing she ever cleaned seemed to get any cleaner by the time she was done, but doing it again was half the fun anyway. Rita shifted aside the little dinosaur Mistah Steel had gotten her for her birthday. It was one of those ancient hard drive things, and in its mouth was a tiny metal rectangle like a single, silver bucktooth.
“Did you get this in an antique shop, Mistah Steel?” She’d turned it around, trying to imagine where she could jam it into her station.
“No,” Mistah Steel had retorted. “I mean, it was a computer store, I think— one of the ones with the cutting edge models, and that new design. With the glass screens.”
“Sure sounds like an antique shop to me.”
It had sat on the keychain to her apartment for a long while, and then when they had moved to the Carte Blanche, her desk. She remembered Mistah Steel smiling when he saw it beside her new work area on their first day aboard, one of the first bits of decoration she’d put down to really make it feel like home.
Rita shifted it to the side slightly, putting it beside a tiny bejeweled egg her Gran had given her for her birthday. There. It stood nicely on the desk beside the various assortment of other items she had to rearrange every time they took off. Maybe she should have waited for them to take off before she put it down this time. Whoops.
True to the past, when they launched, her little array of items went scattering across the desk, and the little toy man skidded along the floor.
Mistah Steel, who weirdly enough wasn’t on the observation deck the way he always was, entered the room and began to gather the few that had fallen to the ground while she picked them all up in her arms and dumped them in a small pile beside her keyboard.
“Rita, I know you like to display these things, but have you thought about a case or something?” He gestured at her with the red robot thing, “At least that way you’d only have one box to pick up.”
“But, Mistah Steel, then I couldn’t see ‘em as good!”
“Not if it’s bullet-proof glass. Or—” He looked at what was in his hand. For a second Mistah Steel seemed to just stop. He stared at the little doll in his hand like it was a bomb instead of a harmless children’s toy. “—plastic,” he finished quietly.
“Why aren’t you lookin’ out the observation deck, Boss?” Mistah Steel moved forward and dropped the robot into her palm quickly like it’d burned him. He tucked both his hands into his pant pockets the way he used to when the only thing he wore was that big, mysterious trench coat. “Thought you would be out there looking down during takeoff.”
“Yeah, I noticed you weren’t there so I came to see what you were up to,” He stared at her face unblinkingly, and she noticed his eyes didn’t move from her own.
Rita dropped the toy behind her and what was weird was that he almost relaxed as it moved further away from him.
So. Mistah Steel didn’t like her new addition. Seemed to almost resent it in fact, and she didn’t know what about it made him look all scared and stiff, like a baby sewer rabbit caught between its fight or flight reflex, but she really didn’t like it.
“We can still go watch. Just you and me, right?” Rita reached to link his arm with hers the way she used to when she had to march him out the office door the few times he’d come in with a stab wound fresh from the previous day. “All you gotta do is ask if you wanna spend some time with this gal. I could go for some best friend time rightabout now.”
“No,” He gave her arm a quick squeeze before letting himself loose, “Thanks, Rita, but I’m pretty sure we’re solidly in outer space by now. I think I’m just gonna go lay down for a bit.” Some of the blood had drained from his face, and he looked a little shaky.
She wondered if she shouldn’t walk him back to his room. No, he didn’t want to hang out with you, Rita. Maybe this was one of those ‘no people' moments, he’d always called them, usually as a moan coming out from a face buried in his arms.
That was okay, though, ‘cause she knew Mistah Ransom was probably back in his room right now, and Mistah Ransom had a sense for Mistah Steel’s hurting times almost as good as her own.
“You don’t feel like firing me anytime soon, do you, Mistah Steel?” Rita asked, ready to scour the fridge of all the ice cream they’d just purchased and empty it one go. Forget savouring it, Mistah Steel might need that ice cream. If he fired her, they would need it way more now than any stream night or time in the future, even if Miss Buddy got sort of extra-polite if they ate all her cookie dough in the first hour after they bought it.
“No, that’s alright,” he said, pausing cautiously before spreading his arms out, “But I could do with a hug?” She didn’t disappoint and rushed in for a hug, and Mistah Steel’s arms were always real big and comfy. Rita hugged him with all the long years of friendship and love she could muster. Mistah Steel was first to let go because he was always first to let go, but he held on longer today, like he needed it. That just meant she hugged him better while she could.
The next time he came by her desk, she made sure the little robot thing was gone.
Mistah Steel smiled then too.
When he finally scrounged up the courage to talk to Buddy, she listened with a rapt silence, unblinking and still, aside from a few questions he did his best to answer succinctly as possible. Juno told himself this was to spare her from having to listen to it, but it was mostly because it pained him to think about.
Remembering what he was like with the THEIA was like having his psychic abilities back, if only because it was like looking at someone else’s thoughts, a different person whose motives he could sort of comprehend, but not fully understand. The Juno with the THEIA Soul had been missing key parts of himself, key people .
“I’m afraid I don’t fully understand the differences between the soul and the spectrum, darling,” Buddy stated during a gap where he’d been scrambling to describe the haze over Mick Mercury’s face. “From what you told me about the THEIA spectrum, it also controlled your movement, correct?”
Juno sipped a spoonful of soup, swallowing chunks of softened sim-beef that melted over his tongue. Buddy had claimed she had an extra bowl, separate from the one she made for Vespa, currently wrapped with a thick cover to the right of her.
How to describe the hollowness of the THEIA soul, the decisiveness with which it carved out everything that might let you defy it. How could he describe the way it whittled and stripped down everything that made you you until even the host believed its honeyed lies? He swallowed his broth.
“It did… but the spectrum mostly bypassed the physical aspects. It only controlled your body when it felt it was necessary,” He explained, “The soul targeted your brain, it persuaded you.”
“I don’t suppose arguing against a being implanted in your chest was a possibility either,” She wondered. “Though it does make me curious how Rita and yourself survived.”
“That was the thing. You wouldn’t want to fight back. The soul’s way was the path of least resistance, the one that made the most sense, and it always made sure you thought it was too. The THEIA planted itself in your head, and threw every bad moment, every decision you regretted back at you.” Her face was grim and he imagined how that sounded to her, their captain always in control of everything, with a long line of regrets, some of which he’d seen himself. Suddenly, he was very grateful the THEIA never got as far as the Cerberus Province. “And if you had anything to hold onto you could use to defy it…” Juno remembered the static, the desperate confusion and certainty that something wasn’t right, “...it’d take that away too.”
“Alright,” She told him, fingers clasped tight enough that he could see the tips of them lighten where they were pressed. “That sounds like quite the ordeal. I do still wonder how you and Rita managed to rid yourselves of the THEIA, but I will leave it be if you do not wish to speak of it.”
Juno went to spoon more soup into his mouth to give himself a moment to reply and realized his bowl was empty, noodles and all. “No, it’s fine,” He started, pushing his bowl to the side slightly, “It erased Rita. I couldn’t think of her name, and it just—” and he waved his fingers in the air for a moment before realizing it didn’t do much to explain the sensation, the static. “I sort of fritzed around it? The memories were still there, but..” Juno trailed off, frustrated.
“That’s fine, darling, I don’t need to know the minutiae of the soul’s abilities,” She placated, and he sat there on his pile of confessions, both ones he’d already said, and the things he had yet to say aloud.
Sure, she accepted his explanation of the THEIA.
But.
At some point, he knew, it all got too convoluted. Who would believe that the last mayor of Hyperion stole the work of a decades-dead animator and made it his magnum opus? Never mind that, who would believe public hero, and staunch politician Ramses had once been Northstar’s golden boy? If a client came up to Juno with a conspiracy like that, he probably would’ve shot them down on principle alone.
Or, maybe he wouldn’t have, but as soon as he found there was no evidence they would have been booted out, blacklisted from the PI registration.
That was what it really came down to.
Juno had no evidence, nothing but a boatload of newly unearthed trauma and the memories of a four-year-old child. Maybe it was better if he didn’t mention Sarah Steel. It was nothing Buddy needed to know anyway.
Even just telling someone about Oldtown made it all feel a little more real, not just a feverish nightmare that’d faded away in the face of Newtown, in the face of a golden city, bright enough to wipe away the image of its past altogether.
“My regrets have haunted me for many many years,” Buddy confided, breaking the brief silence between them. “And though there have been many times I wished they had not occurred in the first place, they have fashioned me into who I am today, and there is not a single time when I wished to be free of my memories.”
A year ago he would have disagreed. Now, Juno’s not so sure. He reaches for his soup, its comforting warmth, and realizes his bowl has emptied itself without his notice.
“It disturbs me to know my former home continues to be duped so thoroughly by a dead man,” Her disturbed look was gone. Instead, Buddy looked at him with the calm expression she wore during their briefings, and he could almost see the gears in her mind turning, spinning pieces on a chessboard so they were arranged and placed exactly where she pictured. “I believe I might know what our next pro-bono mission might be, but only if you don’t mind of course, Juno.”
“What’re we going to do?” Juno asked, crossing his arms and hoping they forced the bitterness in his tone back into his chest. “He’s dead.”
“I don’t think I want to let his reputation remain in such good standing,” Buddy mused, twisting the stem of her glass on the table, and her gaze was sharp as her fiance’s knives, “especially having harmed people I care about.”
Juno swallowed. “You don’t have to do that,” he protested, too weakly to convince himself never mind Buddy Aurinko.
“Let me put it this way, darling,” She said precisely and he uncrossed his arms as her tone grew more firm, like an instinct. “For a very long time, someone I love very dearly was being hurt, and I do not intend to let that happen to anyone I care for ever again. Is that alright with you, Juno?”
He blinked rapidly, and rasped back with a suddenly very thick throat, “Yeah.”
The next morning, Buddy called for a family meeting, and Juno stumbled into his chair with some disbelief. He’d known she was going to gather them for a mission, but for some reason, he’d assumed it’d be longer than literally the next day before she took action.
“We’ll be returning to Mars for this one, darlings,” Vespa grumbled a little at that but didn’t seem willing to interrupt her partner over her disdain for the planet. “Maybe we’re a little late to the party by now, but I thought it was high time we did something about Ramses O’Flaherty.” She smiled genially, and he wondered if the others saw the bags under her eyes he knew came from a sleepless night filled with mission plans.
“Where’d you get this information, Captain? Just asking, ‘cause if you need my help, I know how where we can dig up more!” Rita flipped through her own booklet quickly and practically vibrated in her sea as she looked across the table. “The juicier we make it, the more Mars is gonna sink its claws in. Ohh, this is exactly the kind of thing I like to see in my streams!” She spread her arms out in front of her as if seeing imaginary headlines. “Scandal! Intrigue! Government corruption!”
“It’s less fun when you lived through that corruption, Rita,” Juno reminded her. “Like we did, remember?”
She sunk in her seat a little, distress crossing her face as she did. “Yeah, that kinda thing’s better in streams than real life. But now we’re gonna be regular superheroes, exposing the secrecy, the lies!”
“How soon will this mission be, Captain?” Nureyev asked from his right, “I don’t suppose we’ll be headed straight toward Mars?” They were in the Hera sector, maybe a hundred thousand or so lightyears away from the central Solar System, and a pang of guilt buried itself in him. They were turning the whole ship around just to make it back to Mars because he’d told Buddy.
“We’ll be picking up a few jobs on our way there,” She replied, setting down the few remaining sheaves of paper onto the table. “I simply wanted to give you all ample time to prepare yourselves for when we do arrive. “ Nureyev nodded, and Juno knew he would be spending every spare moment obsessing over the finer points of this mission.
Something warm met his hand under the table, and Juno reached out to hold Nureyev’s hand. Nureyev looked over to him quickly, eyebrows arched as he gave a single squeeze, and then seemed to loosen as Juno returned the gesture. How much had he guessed at, just looking at their overview and connecting certain names to Juno’s?
“That will be all for our meeting today, darlings.”
What would happen when people saw Ramses O’Flaherty’s mistakes, and then looked to his next most fervent supporter?
Juno didn’t realize something was wrong until he was bound to the med-bay the day after getting shot. He didn’t remember much of the day before at all, just the heart-searing panic of seeing a blast of bright blue headed Nureyev’s way, tackling him hard, and the nerves on his side being lit on fire. The rest was a lot of pain, some fogginess, crooning words, soft and pleading from the very gentle arms he was carried by, and then, finally, sleep.
But Juno wasn’t alone in the med-bay when he opened his eyes, so there was that at least. He tried to sit up a bit, then groaned as his side protested, flaring in spikes of heat from around the numb corners of his awareness. Anesthesia probably. Nureyev, whose head was tilted into his palm at what looked like a very uncomfortable angle, stirred at his grunt, and then he was up and alert. The bags under his eyes sat heavy and dark, visible even in the shadowed grey walls of the medbay.
“Juno, here let me…” Nureyev placed his hands gently around Juno’s shoulders, then guided him down onto the bed where his side stopped screaming at him, content to merely pulse every so often with warmth. “How do you feel?”
“Crappy,” He grunted.
“You were shot,” Nureyev’s face did something complicated, before he sat down in his chair again, face carefully blank. “And it took a while for me to get you back to the ship, so I imagine you still haven’t regained all of the blood you lost.”
Juno looked briefly at the plastic bags hanging from his IV, empty, and with a tube connecting them to his arm. There were black stains at the bottom of them, and he turned away before the lack of light stopped being able to contain his imagination.
“Better me than you, at least.” He sighed and wished that for once it could just be neither.
“I don’t think you should be making that decision without me,” He said lightly, like he intended it to be a joke, but missed by a quarter-mile. Juno frowned.
“I mean, I didn’t start the day planning to take a bullet for you, Nureyev, but I did, y’know, take a bullet for you.” Juno didn’t say the words, you’re welcome , but they sat there, and sucked the oxygen out of the air between them, leaving the room heavy and weighted. “I didn’t exactly mean to get shot.”
“A good point, detective. Yesterday you were shot, so you should really be resting up. Recovery comes faster with sleep, I hear.”
“What’s wrong, Nureyev?” Something like anger slipped over his face so fast Juno couldn’t be sure if it was just the darkness warping his sight or not.
He wished he could see his face better, not that Nureyev couldn’t hide his expressions from Juno if he wanted to. He just usually didn’t bother, and that was something he desperately wanted right now.
“Nothing that can’t wait until you rest,” He said, clearly intending that to be the end of the conversation.
“Well, I’m not going to be able to rest until you tell me,” Juno retorted, crossing his arms, then uncrossing them as the skin on his side shifted achingly, “So you might as well spit it out.”
He stared into the darkness intently, like if he could just focus hard enough, it would part to reveal Nureyev, whom he could practically hear worrying his lip right now. Juno wasn’t sure what he’d looked like, wounded and mostly unconscious, but it wasn’t like Nureyev hadn’t seen him worse off before. He’d take a kill shot over three weeks of high-intensity psychic torture any day.
Nureyev put a hand to his face, before using it to smoothen his hair quickly. “You asked me what’s wrong, right? There is nothing wrong, Juno, aside from the fact that I seem to care more about your well-being than you do.”
“You’re… not talking about my refusal to sleep, are you?”
He laughed at that, a series of chuckles, and just biting enough to make Juno’s stomach sink with more than pain. “If that was the only thing I ever had to do to keep you safe, I would convince you to bed in a heartbeat every single night.” Nureyev clasped his hands hard enough that Juno could see the imprints his fingers left as they dug into his skin. “But despite my best efforts you always seem to get hurt.”
“Look, I’m sorry, okay? But if my only issue is wanting you safe, then we’re both hypocrites.”
“Maybe I would be alright with that if you put as much effort into looking after yourself as you did worrying over me.” He returned, and it was so at odds with the soft concerned voice he’d heard half-asleep, Juno could cry from frustration.
“If I didn’t help you, Nureyev, you would be sitting here in my place right now, or dead. But I’m alive and you’re not dead, so I would call that a fair trade-off.”
“I don’t need you to be some— some kind of hero for me, Juno.” he snapped, and Juno was surprised enough by the frustration in his voice, that he could only blink as it registered. “I can very well take care of myself.”
He sucked in a breath that left him dizzy, or maybe that was the blood loss, and focused on keeping his breaths calm against the call of his thumping heartbeat building in anger. “Don’t call me that,” Juno stated firmly, “and I’m not trying to be one, okay? Forgive me if I don’t want to see you getting hurt.”
He thought of red capes, comically happy voices, and plastic helmets, all of these things fresher in his mind than they’d been before thanks to Rita’s brief… ownership of one of the dolls, eerily nostalgic. Some of the details that had been lost to him were now clear and bright. The sharp yellow lettering on the chest, the eyes, black and dotted like beetles, like manholes and wet soil.
“What, you don’t like being called a ‘hero?’ You certainly seem to want to be one,” Nureyev asked sardonically and Juno winced. For a moment, regret crossed his face, before it was gone, wiped away in the face of righteous indignation. “But for god’s sake is it too much to ask for you to be selfish with one thing! Your life, Juno, be selfish with your life instead of trying to keep on throwing it away!”
Juno’s chest constricted around his lungs and his breaths were taxed like he was trying to push them out of a funnel with a hole too small to be of any use.
“That. is not what I’m doing,” he bit out and it was as much for Nureyev as it was himself. That’s not who he was anymore— Juno was more than a punching bag waiting for the day when the blows became too much and all the sand spilled out of him. “We both live dangerous lives, dangerous careers. I can’t always avoid getting hurt.”
“But you do always seem to be the one getting injured the most often out of any of us,” Nureyev threw back, acidic, and he tried to convince himself it was a statement born out of worry, but the thorns of his sharply spoken syllables cut too deep. “And it’s not the first time you’ve done something like this.” Juno tried to think back on past missions. Had he been getting more injured than the others? He hadn’t thought so, but now, dread pooled in his stomach.
“I’m not— Nureyev, I have too much to come back to for me to stage a blaze of glory,” Juno argued back. (Though that had never really stopped him before, had it?) “I know how to take care of myself.”
“Your argument is less than convincing from a hospital bed.” (It was a slippery slope. Who was to say he’d tumbled down without even noticing?) “And a part of me thinks you do this to be heroic.”
“I’m not a hero,” Juno responded more forcefully than he intended to. Nureyev’s eyes widened for only a moment before narrowing.
“You’re right,” and his stomach sank further than he thought possible, “You’re not a hero. You’re a martyr.”
He closed his eyes tight enough that light like fireworks burst across his eyelids. “Shut up.”
“I will not. Not if it means you’re just going to keep on getting hurt, and letting yourself get hurt.”
“That’s not what I’m—” The lights flickered on and blinded him briefly, but when his vision cleared, he could see Nureyev’s face still screwed up anger and desperation that turned his eyes cold before it was all wiped away. He blinked and looked toward the sound of footsteps falling heavy on the flooring.
“You assholes done yelling at each other at five fucking am?” Vespa stalked nearer and the stomp of her heavy boots sounded grumpy as her voice. “Get out of here, Ransom. Might as well check on Steel’s injuries while I’m up and I don’t want you two yelling at each other while I do it.”
Now that the lights were on, Juno could also see the flush lying across Nureyev’s cheeks from frustration rather than exertion, but if you hadn’t heard their words, anyone would have assumed the latter for all the emotion that remained on his face.
“Of course, Vespa,” He didn’t look at Juno as he spoke, turned toward Vespa instead. “Sorry to have woken you.” He didn’t look at Juno when he walked out of the room either as he passed through the doorway and that hurt almost more than the words.
She walked to the left side of his cot, where the shot had caught him in the side. He heard an angry swear and looked down to see red stains dark against the white sheets. Juno quickly averted his gaze from them.
“Tore your goddamn stitches— I just did them last night,” She grumbled seemingly to herself.
“Whoops.” He stated and backtracked as she gave him a burning look. “Sorry.”
He shut his eyes again. Then, Juno opened them to observe the room around him, for all the good it did him with thoughts ricocheting around his skull in hissed whispers and scathing tones. Juno thought about death wishes and sacrifice, Nureyev’s words that hit too close to home for him to find refuge from Vespa’s stitching, even in his thoughts.
“Could hear you yelling from Bud and I’s room,” She said from his side, fingers steady against the skin where they pressed.
“We were communicating,” Juno kept his eyes on the roof. “He was just… upset. Worried, I think.” He wished he could say it with complete certainty, and hated the doubt in his own voice.
“Right, that’s what that was,” He heard a sniff, not a teary or dismissive one, but a sharp little inhale, disdainful. “Look, some of us worried about you— the little hacker was out of her mind with it when Ransom brought you in, drenched in your blood— but that’s not gonna stop us from putting you in danger again.”
“I appreciate it,” Juno said flatly.
“When I go out on a mission, Bud worries, but she knows I can take care of myself,” she ignored him. “You’re a grown-ass lady, Steel. Ransom should know that you can take care of yourself.”
“Oh,” Gratitude bloomed in his chest. “Uh, thanks.”
She didn’t respond to that, but he could hear Vespa grumbling under her breath. “You take a bullet for a guy and suddenly he wants to cover you in bubble wrap, the ungrateful ass.”
Her defense of him helped a little. He had support, but what Nureyev had said— he had done something like this before hadn’t he? Far from any civilization, a bomb fifteen feet away and no hope of survival. It was like he had planned it himself to be inescapable, and he remembered thinking as his last few seconds siphoned away, as both terror and a profound relief became inextricable from each other in his mind, No getting out of this one .
Had he planned it? There was a line in his mind, so blurred by habit and spiraling thoughts of what he did or didn’t deserve that Juno couldn’t tell anymore.
When Juno was four, he loved Turbo.
Turbo was his hero, not the other way around. Juno didn’t have to protect Turbo the same way he did Ben, not that he minded being there for his brother. He knew sometimes his brother needed someone when he scraped his knee or did something wrong and Ma was upset with him.
But Turbo was there for him every night. A lot of kids had toys, or blankets or that one cool white and black stuffy Andy brought to their house named ‘Pengy’ which he told them was an animal even though Juno had never seen one on Mars before.
Juno held Turbo late at night, hugged him really close, and the plastic was solid and maybe a little uncomfortable pressed against him like that, but that was okay. That was how Juno knew he was really there.
“Turbo’s mine,” Ben declared to him one afternoon and he was so mad at his brother. It wasn’t true. “I love him more, and I think he’s mine.”
“No, you don’t!”
“Yes!”
“No,” he grabbed at it, pulling it from Ben’s grip until they were both sitting on the kitchen floor crying, Ben whining like the little baby he was about how his fingers hurt and Ma, Juno hurt him . Juno sat there and cried too, out of frustration, out of anger. “He’s mine, not yours.”
Turbo was his safe place. When he was alone and couldn’t get out of bed to get into Benten’s because Ma would hear and be angry he wasn’t asleep, he held Turbo.
Then, Turbo walked into his life and Juno trusted him because of course he did. He was a good guy.
Then, Turbo Juno ruined their lives.
Ma took everything, the shirts, the paper plates they brought on their rare picnics, the shoes, and… his Turbo. He cried then too, when she pulled it from his fingers, too weak to resist the strength of adult hands. When she snapped that she wouldn’t be doing this if it wasn’t for him Juno forced back the tears, still hiccuping.
He missed him, but even missing him hurt because he knew he shouldn’t. Their lives had been ruined, Ma said, but hadn’t Turbo told him everything was going to be okay? And Juno had listened because that was what you did when you were four and an adult was talking. So, he felt bad about missing Turbo, and then he felt bad that he couldn’t trust Turbo, and that he was always a little bit mad at him on the inside. All of these things bothered Juno, but hurting so much made him feel worse, so he got over it.
He did.
Then, he was still four, but he was in Oldtown, with Ben, and without Turbo (without any heroes.)
Andromeda was better anyway.
It was way too early in the morning to be alive, but there Juno was, awake and miserable for it. Consciousness was a burden he carried, but not without great reluctance. He didn’t exactly want to be awake right now, but thoughts swirled in the darkness behind his eyelids, moving too fast for him to focus on any one of them, but annoying enough to deprive him of some goddamn rest, so he dragged himself out of bed, grabbing Nureyev’s furry maroon bathrobe slung over the sheets and wrapping himself in it.
He hadn’t managed even a minute of sleep, and his walk was more of a trudge at this point, feet dragging on the cold floor toward the kitchen for some coffee.
If he was going to be awake, he was going to be awake .
The kitchen was empty, and he took a moment to pause at the entrance in the hallway gratefully. With thick and clumsy fingers, he poured water into the coffee maker watching it slowly fill up before going to grab a bag of grounds from the cupboard.
He reached up to grab it, swearing lightly as it remained on a shelf just a little too far beyond his reach. Buddy must have placed it there after the last time he finished off the bag and forgot to tell the others so they could restock. It wasn’t like she had been the only one to suffer through the consequential lack of caffeine on their immediate two-week commute.
Quiet footsteps padded behind him and Juno froze. He hadn’t heard them coming at all until they entered the room. He didn’t turn around to look and kept reaching.
Then, an arm stretched out over his head, and he could have sworn Nureyev purposefully stood that close, near enough that his warm breath curled around Juno’s neck. Slender fingers dropped it onto the counter between them without a word, and Juno didn’t look at Nureyev who had busied himself with something else.
“Thanks,” he muttered.
There was a pause, and Juno wondered if Nureyev would even acknowledge him. “Welcome,” came the quiet reply. For all that the man he loved was within arms reach, Nureyev was a light in the depth of space, brilliant and glacial. The kitchen counter between them spanned lightyears.
Juno wished he could press a kiss to Nureyev’s cheek, but first, he had to close that seemingly infinite gap.
In the past week, Juno had seen so little of Nureyev he’d had to wonder if he was avoiding him. It wasn’t like it was hard, with Vespa all but chaining him to his bed, but then again, Juno had been released from the medbay two days ago and still didn’t see much of him. Nureyev was avoiding him. Juno didn’t blame him.
Juno shoveled a spoonful of grounds into the holder and latched it close as the tap behind him turned on.
He pressed his lips together tightly, stomach rebelling with a sudden tightness. “Look, Nureyev. I—I’m sorry.”
His head turned and he stared at Juno wide-eyed. “ You’re sorry—”
“Just let me finish, okay?”
“Juno—”
“I’ve been trying to do better,” Juno spoke over Nureyev, “ be better, and I thought I’d changed, but…” His face was pale and slack with something Juno couldn’t stand to look at, so he dropped his gaze to the kettle on the counter behind Nureyev and focused on the burbling of the water’s surface. “I fu— messed up.” He was apologizing, Juno berated himself, not throwing himself a pity party within Nureyev’s earshot.
“You don’t have to do this—” He tried to interrupt but Juno kept talking because if he didn’t, he was going to start crying and that was not what an apology was about. He was making amends to Nureyev, not guilting him into forgiving him.
“I was reckless. I’ve spent a really long time with a reckless attitude and half-formed death wish, Nureyev. I haven’t changed,” Juno sucked in a choked breath, “And if that’s a deal-breaker for you— I get it. I can’t prove I’m not the same lady who walked out on you a year ago.” He clenched his jaw so the bright tears he could feel gathering and blurring his vision wouldn’t fall. You would think he’d panicked about this enough— it was the only thing he’d done last night— but it looked like he still had more tears to spare. “And I’m sorry, I am so—”
Juno grunted as something latched onto him, tight and warm, and then there were arms around his shoulders and his back. He was being hugged. “Juno,” Nureyev said and it was muffled pressed against his shoulder like that, but in his mouth, it sounded like a prayer and a plea. “You are not to apologize to me.”
“What do you want me to do?” he whispered, “I’m sorry—”
“No, don’t be.” He pulled back his arms and Juno knew he wasn’t the only one reluctant to leave the embrace. “I made a mistake, and you shouldn’t have been the one to pay for it.”
“It’s not your fault I was shot,” Juno argued back, “that was a choice I made, not your mistake.”
“I don’t blame myself for that,” he grimaced, “everything after, however… was entirely on me. It wasn’t anyone’s fault but the gunman’s for your wound, but the words I said were uncalled for.”
Still, Juno shook his head and gripped Nureyev’s hand tighter despite the growing feeling of hope snaking through his limbs. “You were right.”
“I wasn’t,” He responded forcefully. Juno stayed stock-still. “I wasn’t. You were, and I was just too scared and angry to see it. It doesn’t excuse my lack of faith in you, but it did blind me from logic.”
Juno searched Nureyev’s face, and he looked tired. Harried and stressed in a way that spoke of relentless worry, his black silk top and matching pants rumpled like they never were outside the boundaries of his room. Nureyev was always beautiful, with a full face of makeup, or in nothing but Juno’s shirt that hung off his sharp shoulders, at once too big and too short. Now, he looked thin, scarce and he was still beautiful, but in the way a rose was, with its thorns turned out to the world so they might protect its velvet petals.
“But what if you were?” It came out scared, but he was too tired to care. He had thrown himself in the line of fire again, and at the time he’d thought he’d been doing it to save the both of them, but what if it was just the same thing all over again? Juno Steel, finding the nearest pillar of moral justice he could scale just so he could hurl himself off it.
Nureyev’s eyebrows were furrowed together so hard a deep crease had formed between them. “A lady who didn’t want to live would have died before I got the chance to meet him again. Juno, you try so hard to make it back to me and you have managed to do so every single time.” He lifted Juno’s hand slowly to his face, clearly moving cautiously in case he wanted to pull away. He didn’t move and Nureyev kissed the knuckle softly. “I thought maybe… I could scare you into staying safe, but all I did was hurt you.”
A high-pitched beep emitted from somewhere on the counter and Juno jumped while Nureyev went still at the sound, and he realized he’d tuned out the burbling of boiling water during their conversation. Nureyev stood there a moment longer before quietly turning and pouring the water into his mug, dropping the teabag in with a soft plop.
He didn’t turn around to look at Juno as he did. Slowly, Juno slid a hand onto the top of Nureyev’s and curled his fingers around it.
“I can’t say you didn’t hurt me,” He told him, and he reached over for the tupperware of sugar to spoon in two spoons of it into Nureyev’s tea as he watched wordlessly, “just that I forgive you. And… that it wasn’t unwarranted. Outside of the ship, these walls— I don’t know who I am going to be.”
“You’ll be you, I think,” Nureyev replied, and he looked up to meet his eyes, “Brilliant and moral and capable as always.”
Juno snorted but smiled at the words. “Or I’ll go back to throwing myself over bombs the way I always have.”
“I don’t think you will,” he said carefully, “there are notable differences between you and the lady I first met.”
“Glad you think so.”
He reached for his own mug and pushed it beneath the coffee maker, Nureyev sliding his mug across the counter to follow. “If there is one thing I regret about what I said to you, Juno,” He started, “it is that I made you doubt yourself.”
“Don’t give yourself so much credit. I was thinking the same thing.” Juno sipped his coffee and grimaced. It was weak and full of grainy brown sand: grounds. He pulled open the holder; there was no filter inside it. He’d just dumped in a spoonful of straight coffee grounds, and when he took another sip, it was to the taste of hot water with a weak coffee tint. Juno hefted a sigh and drank it anyway.
“Then, I am sorry for reaffirming a notion that is entirely incorrect.”
Juno put down his mug on the counter, and then, mindful of the tea held between them, stood up on his toes and pressed a kiss to Nureyev’s forehead. “Been wanting to do that since I saw you,” Nureyev blinked and then smiled with those beautiful, sharp teeth for the first time that Juno had seen in a week. “Good Morning.”
“Good Morning, love.” He pulled Juno to the couch where he wedged himself into Nureyev’s side comfortably, content to feel the arm around him and shift and turn until the twinges in his side that had all but faded were unnoticeable.
Nureyev sipped his tea and his arm crept around Juno’s shoulders, pulling him closer. Had he known there was going to be hugging with him this morning, he would have foregone the coffee, but he could feel the caffeine on top of his forearms, in his palms, like little ants running through his veins excitedly.
He wondered if Nureyev hadn’t slept at all and that was why he was up so early. Then Juno remembered he was an early riser. Sounded terrible.
Juno had missed him with an ache worse than the one piercing his side. He’d been stabbed and shot a lot more than he’d fought with Peter Nureyev but he wasn’t sure which one he preferred yet. Silence rested between them like a weighted blanket, comfortable and warm, and Juno tapped his toes on the floor nervously.
No one else was up except them, so if he wanted to tell Nureyev, now was that moment. Juno knew if he let it slip by him now, he’d never bring it up again, and Nureyev would never ask. He would never ask, and that more than anything made up his mind.
“When you called me a hero…” He started, and felt the slightest of tenses in the body next to his, “I didn’t like it.”
“Yes, I remember using it against you quite cruelly,” Nureyev replied sombrely, “and then even more so when you told me not to.”
“Yeah, yeah. I know, but it’s not like you’re the first person to say something like that.” Juno closed his eyes, then opened them again as the temptation to keep them closed grew stronger. “When we were kids, Benzaiten always called me ‘Super Steel.’”
“Catchy.”
“Mmm, he liked the alliteration. I acted like I hated the nickname, right up ‘til I realized no one would ever call me it again,” He took a breath and pretended the twinge he felt in his chest was from an old injury and not some other organ there. “But that’s who I wanted to be. You know I was in the force?”
“It was part of my initial research of you,” Nureyev admitted.
“Right. I joined ‘cause when I was eighteen I thought that I could be that person— I would change things for better from the inside,” Juno shook his head, “the HCPD can’t be fixed, or couldn’t— at least not by me. But then, I thought by being a detective I could make Hyperion a better place directly, without all the roadblocks and corruption getting in my way. And all that time I was still trying to be that— that hero that my brother saw.”
There were no words from Nureyev at his side, but he could feel the arm around his shoulders pulling him tighter, closer to his body slowly, as if he was unaware he was doing it.
He continued. “With—” Juno stopped at his name, feeling it hard in his throat. “Ramses,” he finished, “he knew it. And then he used it against me, and I realized that wasn’t who I wanted to be anymore.”
“I did wonder,” He said, “what had prompted your change of… perspective.”
“I didn’t want to be a good guy anymore. Because suddenly doing good didn’t seem as important as— I wanted to live more than I wanted to…” He struggled with the word for a moment, “win?” Juno finished weakly.
The good guys always win! flashed across his mind in sharp yellow script, but Juno was too far away from it to reach him. With an arm resting around him, his entire left side warm with the weight of another body against his own, Juno was so far removed that the panic (of realizing he’d been used, peppy, comical words too manipulative for his voice, a man— deadset and certain that only he knew the right way forward) couldn’t begin to set its claws in him.
“If it helps, as a professional criminal you’re decently far from the title.” Juno huffed tiredly and then yawned, unable to help how it stretched out of him and through his mouth. “Tired, dear?”
“You spoiled me,” he confessed, not caring how needy it made him sound as the caffeine slowly lost its grip on his consciousness. With his anxiousness no longer there to force him awake, each breath was a sedative. “I’ve gotten too used to having you in bed with me.”
“Then rest now, love,” and Juno was already drifting away, eyes pulled down by an insurmountable heaviness. “I’ll be here.”
The moment he stepped off the descending ramp of the Carte Blanche, Juno was assaulted by a wide grin, and two large arms coming to wrap around him. He hugged Mick Mercury and it wasn’t the worst reception he could’ve gotten. Dark Matters could have found out about their return trip and ambushed them, they could have been met by the HCPD.
He’d reassured the others Mick could be trusted.
“Hey, Mick,” Juno patted him on the back but made no move to escape the hug. Mick Mercury was one of those people you didn’t realize you missed until you saw their grin and felt their arms around you again. “How’ve you been?”
“Good, Jayjay.” Mick pulled back and he did look good, not stressed exactly, but energized, less like he was getting beaten down every day by his failures. “But I’m not the one who's been living off-Mars for the last year. I’m sure you’ve had a way more interesting time than me.”
“Hey, Steel!” Vespa called out, “Is this the guy you were talking about?” She walked over, giving Mick an unimpressed once over. “Doesn’t look like much, you sure we can rely on him not to screw us over?”
Well. Juno had said they could trust Mick. He hadn’t actually mentioned anything about relying , but he wasn’t about to bring that up now. “Yeah. Mick’s good, and actually, he’s gonna be the one to show us where we’re setting up today.”
“Juno’s been having me scope out the place for about a month or so,” he agreed. “Took a break from my book so I could get hired by the maintenance guys in Central Hyperion Square, which didn’t actually take that long.”
“In and out,” She seemed reluctantly approving, “Get the information fast and book it. Fine, let’s go.”
It’s nice to meet you, Mick.” Buddy greeted, following her fiancé down the long metal ramp descending from the Carte Blanche. “I’m sure you’ll be fine, seeing as Juno trusts you, and I have the utmost faith in Juno.” Right. He’d placed his credibility on the sturdy, reliable shoulders of Mick Mercury. Mick. Mercury.
“You may refer to me as ‘Big Guy’ as Juno does,” Jet told him, gathering with the others expectantly.
“Right, right, I’ll do that… Big Guy.” Mick laughed, looking a little overwhelmed at the deluge of admittedly very intimidating people. He leaned over, “Juno, I was fired, you know that right? Like, I got the information but I was fired in about a week. Is that okay?”
“Don’t worry about it,” Juno whispered back, slightly amused by the secrecy of his shared shame. Nureyev, who’d been walking down the metal ramp silently started to draw near and Juno started holding out his hand in a gesture to introduce them.
Before he could, Rita whizzed over, a blur of yellow and purple in her turtleneck and overalls. “Mistah Mercury, oh my gosh, it is so nice to finally be meeting you in person!”
“Oh hey, Rita, yeah, it’s good to meet you too.” Juno watched, bewildered as his childhood best friend and long-time best friend shook hands. “You think we would’ve crossed paths, knowing this depressing dame long as we have.” Mick had offered his hand out in an almost professional manner, and this shocked him so much he almost didn’t notice Nuryev’s shoulder brushing up against his own.
“You two know each other?” Juno asked, “Why? There’s zero feasible reason that you— you know what? We’ve got stuff to do.”
“Dear?” He looked at Nureyev, whose plum coloured lips had pulled into an amused grin, bright eyes dancing like sunlight and open lakes. “Might I have the privilege of being introduced to your friend as well?”
“Yeah, alright. Mick this is my…” Juno hesitated to say boyfriend . Too juvenile, too embarrassing. “Partner, Pete Ransom.” Mick blinked and looked between them. A big dopey smile spread across his face.
“Your partner?” He asked, far too eager. “Like your boyfriend? Jay, how have I not heard of this? You have so much to tell me—”
“Are we just going to sit around playing catch-up all day?” Vespa rasped, winding down the window of Mick’s car, a much nicer model of the one he’d had before Newtown, which the others were also waiting in. “Or are we going to stop braiding each other's hair and get our shit done!” Jet sat in the driver’s seat and Buddy and Vespa had taken two seats in the back, but it wasn’t exactly a van.
“Oh yeah, we should go.” Mick went to go find a seat, seemingly fine with not driving his own vehicle. “Gonna be a bit squishy, but nothing we can’t figure out.” Juno found Nureyev having taken the other seat beside Buddy in the back with Mick and Rita having smushed themselves into the other front seat.
“Ready to go, Juno?” He looked at Nureyev who patted his lap, which normally— yeah, he might’ve been okay with that if it wasn’t in front of everyone else here. Juno buried his face in his hands, and gave a muffled groan.
“Get on his goddamn lap, Steel, or sit on the floor,” Vespa snapped, “just hurry up. Don’t know why you're being so uptight about this when you're always all over each other anyway.”
So, he sat on his boyfriend’s lap and proceeded not to make proper eye contact with anyone else as they rode. Nureyev’s long arms, slotting him perfectly against his chest, were almost enough for him to ignore the glint in Buddy’s eye or Mick’s searching wide eyes in the rearview as he seemingly kept himself from bursting with questions. Almost.
He took them to his apartment, and if any of the neighbours thought it was strange to see seven people filing into a single complex, they weren’t willing to come out and confront them about it.
Mick explained the places they would be targeting, told them about the officers’ rotating schedule through the plaza, and what times the maintenance staff was to check up on the displays. The Big Guy set out the three enormous duffels they’d brought full of equipment, and Rita’s bugs while she herself started to set up shop in Mick’s apartment, overcrowded as it was.
As the others began to prepare, Mick pulled him into his kitchen, the only place they could get any semblance of privacy from the rest of the crew, and Juno prepared himself for the onslaught of questions about Nureyev and his various adventures.
When they were in the kitchen Mick pulled him in for another quick hug. “I’ve missed you, Jay.” And when he pulled back, he gave him an admiring look, “You seem like you're doing well for yourself!”
“Thanks,” Juno responded, grinning despite himself. “You said something about a book?”
He waved a hand dismissively. “I’ll send it to you when I’m done, but right now I wanna hear more about you.” That was… unexpected. Any world in which Mick wanted to hear someone else talk more than he did about his own ideas was one Juno didn’t recognize. But that was fine, it wasn’t like he really recognized Hyperion anymore either. “You… look really good. Happy. I had my doubts about this whole off-Mars thing, letting you go and all, but damn if it doesn’t look good on you.”
Juno felt a little wrong-footed, but relaxed. He’d expected to hear an endless amount of questions about Nureyev, or the daring adventures he’d had as a space pirate or whatever Mick thought he did now, but instead got this deluge of weepiness about his well-being. Maybe he hadn’t realized it himself yet, but Mick Mercury had grown from the guy he’d been in ‘the good ol’ days’ and Juno suspected they would be ill-fitting on him now if he even wanted to go back anymore.
Still, Mick’s eyes shone with some drippy emotion Juno did not want getting on his coat, so he nudged his friend’s shoulder and cracked wise. “I don’t know about you ‘letting’ me do stuff,” Juno sniped, “If I waited for your permission to do anything, I’d never have graduated, and we would both still be in high school.”
He grinned, and his eyes still shone a little, but there was joy, a genuine contentment Juno hadn’t seen in Mick before. “See, this is what I’m talking about. Even your insults sound happy, and— and you just sound real good, JayJay. I’m glad you’re doing so well for yourself. Really know how to make a guy worry, and I mean super worried, for like years about you. Especially after that whole thing with Diamond and then the only way I’d ever hear from you was when you were on the news, and it was never for anything good. It was always ‘Private Investigator Steel was injured during a robbery and remains in the hospital’ and man, that’s not how I wanna hear about it if you get hurt—” Mick babbled, and Juno cut him off, pushing down some of his own guilt. He’d never been the best friend, the one you went to with your problems, your troubles, but he could have a least tried to have been a good friend. Mick deserved that at least.
“I know I wasn’t the best friend for… a long time— years. Sorry. I should have called.” Juno apologized.
“S’all right,” He sniffed a little snottily, and Juno pulled a tissue from a box near the paper towel. Mick took it gratefully, pausing to blow his nose. “You’re trying now, and— and you are happy, right?”
“Yeah,” Juno said softly.
“Then that’s good enough for me,” Mick replied, voice thick, before honking loudly into the tissue once more.
“Thanks,” He told him. “You know, we got a little time to talk before I’ve gotta head out with the others, and we could talk about Ransom or something…” Mick looked at him eagerly, face open and curious, “But I think all you need to know about him is that… I love him. A lot.” Mick opened his mouth and Juno hurried to finish, “And I would really like to hear more about your book.”
His eyes lit up, and Juno settled in against the counter patiently.
Lucet Plaza was busy in the mid-morning sun, citizens mingling under the light of a day that did nothing to warm them in the chilled wind, billboards gleaming onto the cement and glinting off the windows of skyscrapers too close for a proper paved street. Kelvin scowled at the long line in front of him. Two cred hot dogs they might be, but twenty minutes was a long-ass time for a street-side stall.
He glanced around the plaza while he was waiting, giving in to the urge to people-watch instead of pulling out his comms and working on his kinematic analysis essay he was determinedly not thinking about. Breaks were for not being productive, he told himself sternly, scanning the plaza for interesting persons with potentially drama-filled lives. Maybe then he would worry less about his own. Kelvin eyed a couple huddling close in the street.
One of them had bright blue hair with cuffed jeans and a thick furry overcoat. She said something to her partner, nose scrunching. They laughed and Kelvin noticed their tuque was the same shade of cyan as their partner’s hair. They must have worn it to match her, which was cute. They were both bundled up— far more than he himself was. But then, he always waited for winter in Hyperion with bated breath. It’ll be like this all the time in Korolev , he thought in anticipation. Just two more years at UH and then Hyperion would be in his rearview.
There were hoards of people he scanned, an elderly man with a brisk walk, his triple-stingered dog at his side, a small child pulling her mom toward a billboard near the ground that burnt a neon yellow imprint against his eyes. They were selling some kind of child-safe blaster— and the ad flipped to some mish-mash of characters he didn’t recognize from a new stream called “Chickens, the Superior Species: Harbingers of New Life.”
There was a scarred man bent over behind it, messing with what looked like the control panel. Then, he lept back as sparks burst from its side, sizzling into nothing in the crisp air. Kelvin eyed him from the line-up.
A new hire? The lady shook out his hands before going to stick them back into the wires, and for a moment, Kelvin could pick out a high voice among the clamour doing its best to earn a dirty look from every parent in the plaza. Why was he doing maintenance in the middle of the day? What if he short-circuited the thing? Easy way to get sued for a few hundred creds if companies weren’t getting their ads blasted out around the clock, especially in a high-traffic area like this.
Kelvin was forced to turn his attention away from the irresponsible engineer and to the stall, back to the lineup he’d somehow found himself at the front of.
He handed over his money and took his hotdog, with its cardboard bun and a sausage that mimicked the texture of styrofoam and spoke of too many months in industrial shipping. That was what you got for a two-cred snack. Kelvin shoved it in his mouth and searched for the engineer, just managing to catch the back of his dark coat as it disappeared in the street past the billboard.
Something shuddered over the displays, a flicker of black, briefly darkening their screens and he turned his attention to the billboards which all lit up with the same image. The dead mayor stared straight across the plaza, unsmiling, and almost unrecognizable for it. Kelvin was more familiar with his smiling visage, grinning down on Hyperion like they were all one big happy family during the peak of his campaign, and then even more so after his death.
A smooth voice started speaking, and by the time it stopped, in the face of his world being forcibly upheaved, Kelvin Baron-Williams had utterly forgotten he’d ever caught a glimpse of Juno Steel, the not-engineer.
Mars shrank beneath them, a mass of red sand slowly consuming the dark smear that’d been Hyperion and the Cerberus Province on its surface. Rita stood beside him, eyes similarly fixed on the ball of crimson shrinking below.
He wanted to ask her, Do you think we made a mistake ? Did we make it worse ? And Juno wondered, What right did we have to rip away every shred of normality Mars regained?
Instead of any of that, he asked, “Is it… weird to say I miss it?” Rita looked up at him, and Juno fought the urge to tell her she should keep watching, to commit every bit of its dwindling light to memory in case it was their last glimpse. He kept talking, “I mean, I shouldn’t, I made a lot of bad choices— still do, actually— and I was kind of miserable a lot of the time. I shouldn’t miss it, but sometimes I—I do.”
“I get it, Mistah Steel, but it wasn’t all bad down there,” Rita stated, more confidently than she would have even a year ago. “I miss it too, and you had a lot of good times to go with the bad. I think that makes it worth missin’ even if you don’t really wanna be there no more.”
“That… makes a lot of sense when you put it like that.”
They stood there for a couple of moments longer, staring through the thick glass at their previous home, which had shrunk until it was nearly indiscernible from the other asteroids and planets orbiting nearby.
“Hey, Rita?”
“Yeah, Mistah Steel?”
He thought about first meetings, toy dolls, and silent support, the years she’d decided to spend at the agency with him, despite his constant misery and tendencies to drive her mad with worry. “You know most of those good times were with you, right?”
“Yeah, but it’s real nice to hear you say it,” Rita warbled and then sniffled a little tearfully.
Juno smiled. “Love you, Rita.”
“I love ya too, Mistah Steel.”
He would miss Hyperion. Juno probably wouldn’t be able to stop himself if he tried, but that was alright. He’d brought the best part of it with him.
It came in snippets. Voices on the radio, TV screens on planets that would normally have no reason to give two shits about Mars.
But the Solar Government had suddenly found their chosen one’s reputation alight before their eyes, with no warning, no preemptive hints. Everyone was looking to Mars for a reaction, and they were delivering.
Juno couldn’t escape it.
It was strange, being an outsider like this, one of the ones turning their eyes toward his old home to ask, what now? Juno Steel looked to Mars, to Hyperion the same as the rest of the Solar System, and waited.
“I mean, I first heard at work and I just had to go through my shift, right?” Someone with a deep voice, higher with incredulity and audibly strained through the radio, “And the entire time I was like ‘what the fuck?’ Our dead mayor tried to brainwash us and— and apparently! Was a children’s animator who stole the Andromeda series?” A quieter whisper, “ What the fuck ?”
Right. That was the other thing.
Juno had been in the kitchen when he first heard, in strict and clipped tones, “Upon further research into the man known as Ramses O’Flaherty, the HCPD has uncovered greater depths about our previous mayor than expected even with the revelations of the last week…” Juno turned on the faucet, letting the rushing water cover the sound of the commscast instead of making up an excuse to turn the damn thing off.
“...previously have been known by the name Jack Takano…” If the dishes knocked against each other more often than usual, then well. Juno was still getting used to washing them aboard a moving vessel, and they were slippery— “taking credit for the Andromeda series…” He shook the gloves off his hands and let them slap against the edge of the sink, stalking out of the room before he heard Sarah Steel’s name for the first time in over a year somewhere outside his own head. Buddy, on her comms at the table, let him slip by without comment and he wondered how much she’d known or already speculated.
Juno hadn’t told her about Jack or those memories from lifetimes ago, because even in his own head it didn’t sound real. Too weird, too outlandish to be true, and now it was outside his control.
Maybe he would get lucky and no one would connect the name of a former detective to that of the long-dead animator who’d had her life’s work stolen.
On Bacchus, Juno stumbled as he caught sight of a girl with deep brown skin, standing cross-armed outside a familiar row of apartments on a comms screen. “I’m glad this happened,” She stated resolutely, “I don’t want Mars to be associated with that shithead forever. I knew something like this was going to happen. We told you. We told everyone and no one believed us. If you’re in shock, that’s on you.” She stared unblinkingly at the camera, unmoving.
“The Solar Government is issuing a formal apology for their hasty support of the man known as Ramses O’Flaherty, revoking his Galactic Honour for the betterment of the galaxy…”
Some were a little more defensive of him.
“You’re not changing my mind on this. The man wasn’t perfect, but at least he wasn’t a literal mob boss!”
“I guess it sounds bad, but I don’t know if one computer chip really proves a whole lot, you know? I have an apartment I get to live in for the rest of my life, and so will my children. We owe him.”
“I can prove Jack Takano’s work was actually his, and if you see here, the HCPD missed some pretty crucial details! His earlier works are full of potential for the Andromeda series, and you can really tell where he developed the initial ideas for it in Turbo…”
He got into the habit of changing the station before those ones could get far, turning the knob casually to some electronic-pop that was popular on the gas giants. No one ever said a word about it, and Juno received no acknowledgment of the subject beyond a comforting pat from Rita. Sometimes he would enter a room and Vespa would change the stream she was watching with Buddy on their comms before he could get a glimpse. Normally, he might be offended they were censoring themselves around him, but most days he was just relieved.
Here was the thing. People got angry, and he knew they would, but those weren’t the ones that bothered him. It was easier to dismiss when they were irrational, raving, in denial, but some…
“I don’t really know how to feel… we all put our hopes in him, and now I’m hearing he did all this horrible stuff? I guess I’m just disappointed, and maybe a little used. I trusted him, which,” a laugh wry and bitter, “yeah, stupid of me. Politicians, right? The worst kind of criminal.”
Some just made him guilty.
He was flicking through streams on his comms when he caught the next one. “Northstar has yet to release an official statement about Sarah Steel, the true creator of the Andromeda series, who had a difficult life after the release of her stolen magnum opus. Jack Takano—” When the anchor said ‘difficult life’ a picture of him flickered through the blue display, and beside him… Benzaiten, a shot from their graduation and he was so young, smiling so wide it hurt to look at. Juno turned it off after a moment of staring, quickly saving a shot of the display before it flickered to a picture of a man with high cheekbones and colourful earrings.
He avoided the radio and all screens even more fervently after that. Though, apart from that one broadcast, when Juno turned back to his comms, unavoidable as they were, there was no more mention of Sarah Steel in anything he managed to catch.
Juno didn’t understand until a few days later, until he let an unfamiliar number ring through. Northstar , the missed calls section showed when he looked it up. Juno sat still in the training room, before forcing himself into another push-up and relying on his pounding heart to warm the chill in him. He didn’t call back.
“I think it’s better to know now,” a middle-aged woman stood with a microphone held to her face. A ring glinted from her left hand. “Now, we can start to rebuild. Make Hyperion ours again from the ground up.” In the background, a burly, well-muscled woman yanked a rope along a line of others doing the same, and the statue of a golden man toppled to the ground in the middle of Minerva Heights. Its head cracked as it hit the cement.
The woman smiled. “Starting with a little tearing down, of course.”
If Juno thought the universe would collapse or violently implode, he was wrong. The universe kept expanding, and the empty reaches of space didn’t rise to strike at the Carte Blanche for their audacity, which was a relief. It was comforting, actually, to know that no matter what he did, at least something out there wouldn’t give a crap.
It wasn’t entirely true that nothing had changed, however. The crew provided such an air of non-reaction that it was impossible for it to be anything but intentional. He didn’t expect them to bring it up over brisket and tea or anything, like ‘sucks that you were brainwashed by your mayor. Shame about your mom.’ Though maybe from Buddy, with a little more tact.
The first time it came up blatantly was during a check-up, one of the weekly ones Vespa had insisted on, frustrated certain members of the crew adamantly refused to come into the medbay after missions, even if she knew they were injured. So, I guess I’m resorting to babysitting you , she’d rasped unhappily, while Buddy radiated quiet contemplation. Every. Week. You hear me ?
“Any pain from your previous injuries?” Vespa asked, all business and no pity in her eyes. He was grateful for that. Juno had been in a couple of hospital rooms with doctors, nurses that hadn’t been able to hide their pity at his scars quickly enough— part of the reason he avoided those places. “Chronic? Flaring? Aches or fatigue?”
“No,” he said shortly. “Can I put my pants back on?” Juno shivered on the cot, wrapping his arms around herself and shifting uncomfortably. Was it air-conditioned in here? There was no way it wasn’t.
Vespa tossed them to him, and he grabbed them from his lap. “Yeah, as long as you’re not hiding any injuries from me in your boxers.”
“I’m not hiding— there’s nothing—” Juno snapped his jaw closed and flushed, pulling on his pants and fiddling with the zipper so he wouldn’t have to see the smug smile on Vespa’s face at his flustering. “Should I come naked next week too?” He snarked instead and snatched his shirt out of the air as she threw it to him as well.
“No,” Vespa said. “Just needed to do a survey myself. Can’t be sure you’re not hiding something—”
“Disfiguring?” He threw out.
“That could affect your work in the field.” She finished, voice sharp. “You think you’re the only one with scars on this ship, Steel? I’ve got some that make yours look like papercuts.” And as she moved to pull at the wires and peel the pads away from under his shirt, her collar shifted with the movement. He could make out the edges of a scar there, something deep and shiny over her collarbone. Right.
“Where from?”
She fiddled with something out of his eyesight and he didn’t turn his head to look at her as she did. “Same way you got yours, I guess.” A hand on his back pushed him from the cot and he slid off of it easily. Vespa gripped his shoulder and Juno thought of the thin scars back there, long and wispy near the ends but ragged in the middle. “Wager we’ve got some similar experiences.”
“Oh,” he said, and then, for a lack of anything better. “Sorry? Not that you need my apologies, I’m sure it’s been a while and all. Uh, thanks for sharing?”
“I don’t need you spilling your feelings all over me just ‘cause we both had crappy parents,” Vespa shot back, less acidic than he might have expected. “But… at least I don’t have to deal with mine anymore. And it’s a shitty situation that you still have to.” She angrily jammed her hands into the pockets of cargo pants, now that it seemed she didn’t have anything left to distract from looking at Juno while they talked.
“Well, thanks.”
“I’m your doctor,” Vespa waved him off. “Send in Ransom when you see him. He was supposed to have his appointment before you.” Juno took the hint and left before they both started snapping to get rid of the mushy feeling in his chest.
He went to Buddy, a box of hair dye in one hand and a bag full of makeup he didn’t know how to use in the other. Juno found her in the planning room, pouring over papers of their next mission. She was up late, bags hanging from her eyes the same way they did Nureyev’s on those late nights Juno had to coerce him into sleep. The only acknowledgment he received was the slight head bob she gave as he drew nearer.
Juno plopped his bag onto the table. “About this disguise.”
“Yes,” She shuffled the pages together and tapped the bottom of the pile against the table, moving them aside as she gave him her full attention, “What of it?”
He took out the bottle of hair dye, letting some of the cosmetic products spill out over the table. “I don’t even know how to use these, never mind passably wear them.” Juno held up a bottle of highlighter and imagined how to apply it.
“I’m sure Pete could show you. Anything else you need, Juno?” She asked as he didn’t move to get up.
“Why all the extra effort this time around?” He was pretty sure Nureyev had gotten to pick out his own outfit. “I’m just wondering if there’s a reason I’m going dressed to my nines while Ransom can swan in as usual.”
“Well,” Buddy’s hand paused by her ear before she visibly stopped herself. He realized she had been about to tuck her hair behind her cybernetic eye. Juno didn’t give any sign he noticed. It wasn’t his place to tell her how comfortable to be with him. “To be perfectly upright, this is as a result of me taking into account the lack of anonymity that has developed around you recently.”
It was as close an acknowledgment of what was happening on Mars that he’d gotten from her, though Juno knew she probably knew more than anyone else on the ship, save Rita. And Jet. Alright, so more than two members specifically. He should probably rectify that.
The thought was pushed aside in favour of a small swell of shame. “Sorry. It probably wasn’t what you were expecting when you brought me on.”
She snorted at him and he blinked before frowning. “You are hardly the most infamous among us, Juno, and not very infamous at all, at that,” Buddy smiled at him, amused and he felt the well of shame that had filled his gut unceremoniously dry. “I have much more trouble hiding Vespa and myself. I am simply planning ahead as best I can. Therefore, the extra precautions.”
He ran his fingers over the cardboard edges of the hair dye and grimaced at it anyway. “It’s going to be black for ages,” Juno complained.
Her smile curled, which is what it did when she amused by him instead of annoyed. “It’s temporary, and if it bothers you that much, I have a few wigs I could lend you for the sake of the mission tomorrow.”
“No,” He drew the items back into his bag, “it’s fine. I can suck up some chemical waste for the sake of going unnoticed.”
“You’re incredibly noble,” She teased, and then her voice grew more genuine and he flushed unwillingly at the praise in her voice. “Something I very much admire about you.”
Okay, now he was leaving. Before she did something else he couldn’t handle like complimenting him again. “Cool, thanks. Gonna go get ready for the thing. Got some hair dying to do.” Her soft laughter followed him down the hallway.
It was by pure coincidence that the turning of his lips looked like a smile instead of the grimace it was.
Juno stayed tense the entire week before his birthday. He waited for someone to say something about it or for Rita to mention it.
But the day before went by without so much as a secretive smile passing between his crewmates, and there were no gentle questions about gifts or his age whatsoever.
He turned forty and that was that. There was no birthday cake or sudden musical break over breakfast or supper. When he got into bed that night, Nureyev pressed a kiss to his head lightly, part of a routine he’d come to treasure.
“Happy Birthday, love,” He whispered, eyes already sliding shut and arms curled around Juno’s body like this was the position he would hold for the rest of his life if he could.
“Thanks.”
Juno Steel turned forty without his brother to see the turning of the clock with him. He didn’t know if the others knew about his brother. All it would take was one well-timed announcement about the true creator of Andromeda and they’d be able to draw their own conclusions.
Because Juno’s birthday hadn’t been something to celebrate since he was nineteen, since he was a teenager over two decades ago and a matching smile blew out the candles of a homemade cake beside him.
“Dear, do you plan on staying awake until it isn’t your birthday anymore?” Nureyev’s voice was soft with sleep and Juno took a moment to admire it, the vulnerability of his partner’s sleep-heavy voice before bed. Happy birthday to me , he thought, and then, happy birthday, Benzaiten .
“No,” Juno cuddled in closer, “I’m sleeping.”
“Then goodnight, love.”
“Night.”
Juno had hundreds of phone calls from Northstar eating up the memory on his comms. He staunchly ignored them until the curiosity got the better of him.
Hello, Mr. Steel. Northstar would like to offer you a chance to grow your image among the citizens of Hyperion. We’re interested in offering you a place in a new documentary, called—
He clicked off the message, cutting out the rest and cleared his voicemail. Then, Juno went to punch out his feelings in the training room for two hours until the sting of his knuckles against the vinyl was stronger than the burning in his hands and throat. He blocked the number and didn’t look at any of his other voicemails after that.
He opened his eyes to stare at the ceiling, blinking tiredly at the dull black shadows that turned it a deep maroon. His head wasn’t pounding so much as swirling, twisting in on itself in a never-ending tangle of thoughts that furled and uncurled themselves behind his closed eyelids.
Juno huffed through his nose, and threw the blanket off over his torso, sticking his legs out the side of the bed. He paused as Nureyev stirred, lifting his head to look at Juno weakly.
“Love?” He murmured, “What is it?”
“Be right back ‘Reyev,” Juno soothed, cupping his partner’s face and pushing back strands of hair that had been jostled to flop on his forehead. “I promise.” Nureyev closed his eyes and sunk back into his restful state with a sigh. Even this felt like an act of trust, unwavering, without a single moment of hesitation or fear.
There was something breathtaking about being believed so wholly, knowing that he’d been the last one to leave a chip in the glass wall of his partner’s exterior and still being allowed to weld them shut once more. It helped to know that Nureyev sank into his every touch like Juno actually was healing him with just his fingertips.
Juno resisted the urge to wake him up with a goodbye kiss and laid the blanket back over his sleeping form carefully. Then, as if he’d meant to, as if he’d known from the moment he’d woken, grabbed the THEIA soul from the closet and jammed it into his pocket as he left the room.
His feet carried him to the front of the Carte Blanche and the deck, surrounded by enormous windows, gave him a full view of the stars. They shifted against the black canvas of space, shimmering in enormous spirals of glitter that shone far brighter than any stage light. Juno turned the chip in his hand for a moment, felt the ridges and sharp, poking wires like mandibles along its top, the dent in the middle.
He held it in his palm, and it was so small, tiny for something that wreaked so much havoc. It scared him a little, to hold it like this, like he was holding another person, a stranger that lived within the mess of wires and programming, ready to rear its head and rip away everything he loved.
He wondered who named this thing the ‘soul.’ Like a soul was anything other than someone who was capable of change, of emotion, of feeling, willpower, thought, everything the THEIA tore away and buried beneath blankets of cotton compliance. Juno thought of the voice that’d come out of his vocal cords, the program that’d stolen his memories, his will, and then took his voice too, but only ever spoke with the soulless apathy of a creature that couldn’t understand any of those things.
It turned him into a stranger, and if that stranger was reminiscent of him in some way, it was a coincidence. Or, a purposeful misunderstanding, because no matter how similar, Juno wasn’t the person the THEIA made him. He didn’t want to be, and that was what it came down to. As long as Juno didn’t want to be that person, as long as he tried to change, to grow, to become someone worthy of the family and friends he had stumbled into, the Juno Steel the THEIA made would never be an accurate depiction of the original.
Juno stuck the chip into a trash chute and went to the blaster at the front of the deck. He missed his first shot and watched the beam of green light shoot off into space, the little chip still spinning small as any of the stars spotting the infinite black sky.
On the Carte Blanche, he wasn’t a hero or a monster. He was simply himself, Juno Steel, former Private Eye, Peter Nureyev’s partner once more, Rita’s best friend, and a crewmember of the Carte Blanche. And the only thing that made those parts of him matter was because they were what he chose.
There were worse things to be.
His second shot connected, and the chip, glinting silver as a star, shattered into a million fragments of metal and tiny copper wires like star-spun worms writhing in pain. Juno watched.
Then, he trod off to sink back under the covers of his bed, eager to rejoin the other warm presence he knew was waiting.